Zoo - Round 1 Results

All the seeds had 1st round byes but there were some upsets on the opening day.  Below were the 4 Universal Tennis upsets, which occur when the difference in rating is more than 1.0, and the 4 biggest upsets per TennisRecruiting.Net based off their ranking system.

UTR Upsets:
Sean Burnette (11.95) def. Oliver Sec (13.47) 6-3, 3-6, 6-1
Jacob Wareti (11.36) def. Nikolai Parodi (12.55) 7-6(2), 6-3
Ryland McDermott (11.65) def. Payam Ahmadi (12.82) 2-6, 6-1, 6-3
Alex Ross (12.29) def. Blaine Boyden (13.77) 6-1, 7-5

TR.Net Biggest Upsets - chance of winning in ( ):
Lorenzo Rollhauser (11%) def. Adrian Chamdani 2-6, 6-1, 6-0
Sean Burnette (9%) def. Oliver Sec 6-3, 3-6, 6-1
Ryland McDermott (8%) def. Payam Ahmadi 2-6, 6-1, 6-3
Jason Kerst (7%) def. Joshua Sheehy 6-2, 6-4

Time For The Zoo

It's late July/early August so that means it's time for the Zoo as the USTA National Championships get started in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Play gets underway Friday morning at 8am at both Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University.

Here is the Day 1 schedule of play and the tournament's host site which includes all schedules, results, and profiles. If you want to follow the tournament throughout the next week you also need to follow Colette Lewis on Twitter and check out her site, Zoo Tennis.

A few years ago when I was writing for a different site I did a breakdown of the Boys 18 singles draw where I listed each player's hometown, high school graduation class, college commitment/interests, Tennis Recruiting.Net star level, and Universal Tennis Rating. It takes some time but I decided to do it again this year to give everyone, including me, a better understanding of who these guys are and where they are heading.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results: 7/20 - 7/26

3 college guys picked up singles titles over the weekend with another 5 making to the finals.

Andre Dome (Cal Poly '13) won his 3rd career Futures title with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 win over Matt Reid in the finals of the Canada F5 in Vancouver.  All 3 of Dome's titles have come this year with the other 2 being the Mexico F5 and Thailand F2.

Peter Nagy (Texas A&M Corpus Christi '15) won his 1st career Futures title with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Petr Michnev in the finals of the Slovakia F2 in Slovenska Lupca.

Maxime Tabatruong (UCLA '13) won his 2nd career Futures title with a 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 win over former teammate Adrien Puget (UCLA '14) in the finals of the France F15 in Troyes. Tabatruong's other title came in 2014 at the Morocco F6.

Michael Mmoh defeats Jared Hiltzik in Godfrey F22 Final

The Godfrey USA F22 Future Final was all you could have wanted and more as both Illinois rising senior Jared Hiltzik and 17-year old Michael Mmoh slugged it out point after point for the better part of 3 hours.  The match was originally scheduled to start at 10am central but rain in the area pushed the starting time back an hour to 11am.  Most of the match was played under cloudy skies with temperatures in the mid-70s until rain halted play for about 30 minutes early in the 3rd set. The 30-minute break would be big for Mmoh but we'll get to that in a little bit.

Mmoh, who had won 1 previous Futures title (2014 USA F29/Brownsville), came into the match without having dropped a set all week while Hiltzik, who was making his first appearance in a Futures final, had a pair of matches go the distance. Mmoh came into the final with an ATP ranking of #618 (also an ITF Jr Ranking of #3) while Hiltzik was ranked #704.

Mmoh came out really focused in the first set and was hammering both his forehand and backhand with laser like precision while Hiltzik struggled a bit to keep the ball in play. Hiltzik had more errors in the 1st set than I remember seeing in his whole semifinal match against Clay Thompson. 

Best Teams Not To Win A Natty In The Last 10 Years: 2008 Virginia Cavaliers

If you asked the legion of Virginia fans on The Sabre to name the best Virginia team ever, I think many wouldn't name either of the recent National Championship teams but instead would go with the feature of this post - the 2008 Virginia Cavaliers.

The 2008 team, in my opinion, had the most talent 1 through 6 of any team they've ever fielded; I mean when your #6 guy goes on to win 14 titles (and counting) on the Future circuit (7 singles/7 doubles) you know you had some quality depth. The starting 6 from the 2008 team has won 28 singles and 70 doubles titles at the pro level which is a pretty staggering number.  The only college teams that could rival that number would be some of the Stanford teams with the Bryan Brothers in the late 90s.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 7/13 - 7/19

4 guys made finals this week and 2 brought home the gold as Rajeev Ram (Illinois '03) and Georgi Rumenov Payakov (Armstrong State '13) were the 2 to get it done.

Rajeev Ram (Illinois '03) won his 2nd career ATP title in Newport by defeating Ivo Karlovic 7-6 in the 3rd. Ram's other career ATP title also came in Newport back in 2009. Ram has also won 7 Challenger and 2 Futures in his accomplished career.

Georgi Rumenov Payakov (Armstrong State '13) won his 3rd career Futures title by knocking off recent Texas grad Soren Hess-Olesen 6-3 in the 3rd in the finals of the Portugal F9. All 3 of Rumenov Payakov's titles have come this year in Portugal with the other 2 being the F5 and F6.

Davis Cup

Lots of current and former college guys representing their country in Davis Cup action this weekend. Note: The year listed after the school name is the last year they played at that school - doesn't necessarily mean they graduated.

Davis Cup World Group Scoreboard and Groups 1 and 2 Scoreboard

World Group Quartefinals:

Great Britain def. France 3-1 - Dominic Inglot (Virginia '09) is on GBR but didn't play.

Australia def. Kazakhstan 3-2 - Aleksandr Nedovyesov (Oklahoma State '10) represented KAZ

• #115 Aleksandr Nedovyesov def. #41 Nick Kyrgios 7-6(5), 6-7(2), 7-6(5), 6-4 - KAZ 2-0
• Lleyton Hewitt/Sam Groth def. Aleksandr Nedovyesov/Andrey Golubev 6-4, 7-6, 6-2 - KAZ 2-1
• #279 Lleyton Hewitt def. #115 Aleksandr Nedovyesov 7-6, 6-2, 6-3 - AUS 3-2

World University Games - Gwangju, Korea

A few guys that played in college in the US played over in Korea in the World University Games. Below are the singles results with full draws for both singles and doubles further down.

The big highlight was the doubles team of Joe Salisbury (Memphis '14) and Darren Walsh (SMU '11) winning the doubles title by defeating the #1 seed Hsin-Han Lee and Hsien-Yin Peng (TPE) 2-6, 6-3, 1-0 (8)

1st Round
Raphael Hemmeler (SUI-Duke '15) def. Roman Trkulja (CAN-Penn State Sr) 6-3, 6-3
Julio Cesar Vasquez (MEX) def. Austin Rapp (USC-UCLA Soph) 6-2, 5-7, 7-6(3)

3 REASONS YOU CAN’T MISS THE US OPEN

The 2015 US Open is around the corner, and one thing is certain – it’s a can’t-miss experience for both diehard and casual fans alike. Grab your tickets now – they are going fast.

These are the top 3 reasons that you can’t miss out on the 2015 US Open.

1. The tennis is electrifying.

• Have you ever seen Serena, Roger or Rafa play, their talent and shot-making on full display? Now, imagine seeing them live and in person. There’s nothing like it. It’s exciting, it’s intense – and it’s impossible to fully appreciate through a television set.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 7/6- 7/12

Normally I just highlight singles results but I had to give a shout out to Jean-Julien Rojer (UCLA '02) on winning the Wimbledon Men's Doubles Championship as he and partner Horia Tecau defeated John Peers (Baylor '11) and Jamie Murray 7-6(5), 6-4, 6-4 in the finals. It was Rojer's 39th career professional doubles title but his 1st grand slam.

Somdev Devvarman (Virginia '08) won his 2nd Challenger title this year and 9th career pro title (5 Challenger/4 Futures) with a 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(5) win over #229 Daniel Nguyen in the finals of the Winnetka, Illinois Challenger. Devvarman led 7-5, 4-0 before dropping 9 of the next 10 games to go down 3-1 in the 3rd but he rallied to win in a match that was delayed 5 times by rain and didn't finish until 1:30am.  Devarrman picks up 80 points for the win and wasn't defending any.

Sebastian Fanselow (Pepperdine '13) won his first title this year and 2nd in his career (2012 Germany F9) by defeating #485 Duje Kekez 6-4, 6-2 in the finals of the Saarlouis, Germany F6 Future. Fanselow picks up 18 points for the win and wasn't defending any.

Pan Am Games - Toronto

Plenty of college guys in action at the Pan Am Games in Toronto with tennis being played at the Aviva Centre which is where the Rogers Cup (ATP Master Series) is played every other year.

Singles Draw
Live Scoring

2nd Round Results

Philip Bester (CAN) def. Gonzales Austin (USA-Vanderbilt '15) 6-4, 6-4

Gonzalo Escobar (ECU-Texas Tech '12) def. William Dorantes (CUB) 6-2, 6-0

Dennis Novikov (USA-UCLA '13) def. Orlando Luz (BRA) 6-1, 7-6

Emilio Gomez (ECU-USC '13) def. Rodrigo Senattore 6-3, 6-2

Eduardo Struvay (COL) def. Yannik James (GRN-Denver Jr) 7-5, 6-2

Brayden Schnur (CAN-UNC Jr) def. Darian King (BAR) 6-2, 6-4

Hugo Dellien (BOL) def. Wilfredo Gonzalez (GUA-Miami '15) 7-6, 0-6, 6-1

Diego Galeano (PAR-Baylor '15) def. Marcelo Arevalo (ESA-Tulsa '11) 7-5, 6-3

Ricardo Rodriguez Pace (VEN) def. Jean-Yves Aubone (USA-Florida St '10) 6-3, 4-6, 6-1

Nicolas Barrientos (COL) def. Julian Saborio (CRC-LSU Commit) 4-6, 6-2, 6-2

Roberto Cid (DOM-South Florida Sr) def. Peter Polansky (CAN) 6-2, 7-5

Weekly News

Several guys with college ties are playing in the Pan Am Games this week in Toronto. 1st round action got underway today with Brayden Schnur (UNC Rising Jr), Yannik James (Denver Rising Jr), Roberto Cid (South Florida Rising Sr), Gonzales Austin (Vanderbilt '15), Diego Galeano (Baylor '15), Wilfredo Gonzalez (Miami '15), Jean-Yves Aubone (Florida State '10), and incoming LSU recruit Julian Saborio all winning their opening round matches.  Gonzalo Escobar (Texas Tech '12), Emilio Gomez (USC '13), Dennis Novikov (UCLA '13), and Marcelo Arevalo (Tulsa '11) each got 1st round byes. For full draws click on this link.

The Brampton Guardian had an article about Brayden Schnur and mentioned that Schnur is going to use the summer to determine whether he'll be back at UNC for his junior year or whether he'll go pro - but it does say as of this minute that he plans on coming back to UNC.

We are guaranteed to have a former college player crowned as Wimbledon Men's Doubles Champ as John Peers (Baylor '11) and Jamie Murray will meet the #4 seeds Jean-Julien Rojer (UCLA '02) and Horia Tecau in the finals on Saturday afternoon following the women's singles finals. Follow more background on Peers and Rojer check out this nice piece written by Dominic Tinodi of the SmartAthlete.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/29- 7/5

Another nice week on the tour with 4 former college guys picking up Futures titles and 4 coming up just short by losing in the finals.  Below are the guys that made it to at least the semis last week and further down below are all the results from this past week.

Marek Michalicka (Wisconsin '11) picked up Futures title #10 with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Maximilian Neuchrist in the finals of the Czech Republic F5. It was Michalicka's 2nd title in 4 finals appearances this year.

Tucker Vorster (Ole Miss '11) improved to 3-1 in Futures finals this year after knocking off Evan King (Michigan '13) 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 in the finals of the Zimbabwe F3. It was title #4 for Vorster who now has a 4-4 record in finals.

Sanam Singh (Virginia '11) picked up his 1st Futures title since Calabasas in 2013 with a 7-6, 7-6 win over Mitchell Krueger in the finals of the Wichita USA F21. Singh now has 7 career titles with 5 coming in India in 2012.

Emilio Gomez (USC '13) won a Futures title for the 2nd consecutive week after defeating Ohio State sophomore Mikael Torpegaard 6-4, 6-4 in the finals of the Pittsburgh USA F20. It was Gomez's 3rd Futures title of the year and 7th of his career.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/22- 6/28

University of Kentucky athletes not only did extremely well in the NBA draft this week they also performed exceptional well on the tennis court with Tom Jomby ('14) winning a Future in Spain, Alex Musialek ('12) winning a Future in France, Eric Quigley ('12) making the semis in Canada, Trey Yates (Soph) winning the Atlanta City Open and thus getting a wild card into qualies at the ATP 250 in Atlanta, and Jesse Witten ('05) winning US Open National Playoff Southern Sectional and thus getting a chance to compete for a qualifying wild card at the US Open.  

It was pro singles title #1 for Jomby after he defeated #369 Roberto Ortega-Olmedo 6-2, 6-4 in the finals of the Palma del Rio, Spain $15K Future. Jomby had come up short in his 2 previous finals - Tunisia F13 (L to D Medvedev 6-4, 6-0) in April 2015 & Egypt F33 (L to M Safwat 6-4, 6-4) in November 2014. Jomby is now 27-12 on the year.

Musialek's 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 win over #1080 Pedro Martinez Portero in the finals of the Toulon, France $15K Future was his 2nd singles title this year and 7th of his career (all Futures). Musialek's previous titles were in Iran (1/15), Iran (12/14), Iran (9/14), Iran (8/14), Thailand (2/14), and Israel (3/13). Musialek is now 26-14 on the year. 

Emilio Gomez (USC '13) won his 2nd Future title of the year and 6th of his career with a 7-6(3), 6-4 win over Sekou Bangoura (Florida '08) at the USA F18 in Rochester. Gomez's other title this year came at the Columbia F1 with his other 4 all coming on his home soil in Ecuador - 2 in 2014, 1 in 2013, 1 in 2009. 

Weekly News

Wisconsin announced that former graduate Danny Westerman was returning to Madison to take over the vacant head coaching job. Westerman had spent the last 9 years in Denver as head coach and had done a tremendous job with the Pioneers.  Full release here

Here is my updated D1 Men's Head Coaching Carousel - if you know of others that needed to be added let me know. 

The ITA announced the 2015 Collegiate All-Star Team - full release here:

Best Teams Not To Win A Natty In The Last 10 Years: 2006 Georgia Bulldogs

The 2006 Georgia Bulldogs seemed like they were a team that was destined to give Manny Diaz his 3rd NCAA Championship and the schools 5th after they spent virtually the entire season ranked #1.

The experienced team started 3 seniors, 2 juniors, and a sophomore and 1 of the juniors was none other than big John Isner.  Isner won the ITA All Americans in the fall by defeating Baylor's Lars Poerschke 7-6, 7-6 in the final. Georgia's eventual #6 singles player, Strahinja Bobusic, picked up 3 top 35 wins in the fall including a win over #2 Ludovic Walter of Duke.

Luis Flores was the lone sophomore and he started off the year playing at #1 singles. Flores, who was a top 10 ITF junior with a pair of wins over this guy named Novak Djokovic, actually joined the team in January of the year prior but wasn't eligible to play until January 2006. Antonio Ruiz teamed with John Isner to win the 2005 NCAA Doubles Championship but then took the fall off to play in pro events.  Colin Purcell was coming off a year where he went 19-4 splitting time between #4 and #5 and he had a decent fall but an injury kept him out of the lineup for the first 3 matches of the 2006 season.  Matic Omerzel was coming off a 16-7 year where he played mostly at #3 and then he made it to the finals of the SEC Indoors in January 2006.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/15 - 6/21

Another great week for former college players as both Evan King (Michigan '13) and Clay Thompson (UCLA '14) each won their first professional singles title.  Thompson didn't drop a set or get broke all week in route to winning his title in Manzanillo, Mexico while King only dropped 1 set in route to his title Harare, Zimbabwe.

Kevin Anderson (Illinois '07) made his 2nd career final in an ATP 500 event (lost to Dimitrov 7-6(5) in 3rd in Acapulco in February 2014) but came up just short against #3 Andy Murray.

Adrien Puget (UCLA '14) made his second final of the year (won Spain Future in April) before falling 6-4, 7-6 to Zhizhen Zhang in the France Future.

Weekly News

Here are some of the college tennis news stories from the past week:

• Tommy Paul, who was a Georgia commit, decided to sign with Nike and turn pro as was announced by Colette Lewis at ZooTennis.  I was hoping Paul would end up at Georgia but with his recent results (2 Futures Titles & French Open Jr Title) and the Nike deal you can't blame him for choosing the route he did. Only time will tell if the decision turns out to a be a wise one.

• Georgia lost and gained an assistant coach in the last week. Will Glenn stepped down last Friday after 10 years as the assistant coach but today it was announced that former Georgia All-American Bo Hodge was returning to Athens after spending the last 4 years as John Roddick's assistant at Oklahoma. 

Best Teams Not To Win A Natty In The Last 10 Years: 2005 Baylor Bears

After seeing that Connor Smith was up to 200 in the latest ATP rankings that got me thinking about how Ohio State didn't win a national championship the year he played at #6 singles or for that matter the year he played at #3.  Then I started thinking about some of the other teams that were seemingly loaded but came up short when it mattered the most. So I decided to go back through the last 10 years and pick out those teams the many considered favorites and replay the moment where their season came to an end.

I'll start off with the 2004-05 season and this is a pretty obvious one.  The Matt Knoll coached Baylor Bears were the defending national champs and they were ranked #1 all season long in every poll released except for the last one.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/8 - 6/14

There was 1 former college player that picked up a title this week with Tennys Sandgren (Tennessee '11) winning the $15K Charlottesville, Virginia Future with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Ernesto Escobedo.  It was Sandgren's 9th career pro title (8 Futures and 1 Challenger)

Roberto Cid (South Florida Sr) made it to the finals of the $10K Bursa, Turkey Future before falling 7-5, 6-3 to #253 Yannick Jankovits.

Alex Sarkissian (Pepperdine '14) made it to the finals of the $10K Hong Kong Future before retiring down 4-1 in the 1st to #213 Ti Chen.

In the College on Tour tab I added the point totals and prize money that the guys are playing for each week.

Drake's Alen Salibasic Wins Elite 89 Award (Again)

I saw this a few weeks ago but didn't actually get around to reading what it was all about until just a few days ago.  The award goes to the student-athlete with the highest GPA from all those who participated in the NCAA Championships and who had participated on the team for at least 2 years.

The video below the Drake release is an interview with Salibasic conducted by the legendary Dave "Koz" Kozlowski.  Near the end it mentions that Salibasic will be heading to graduate school at Princeton and he'll also be a graduate assistant coach with the tennis team.

State of the Union - College Tennis Today

My main priority over the last 4 months was to keep the content up to date so I didn't do much with the design or layout.  Now that we've hit the off-season I've been trying to spiff up the site a bit. This was first stab at doing a blog so most of the layout and features I copied from other sites but other features I've had to research to figure out how they work. I was just able to figure out how to make a scrolling text box which I thought was kind of neat and I've recently learned how to make a picture in picture page (iframe) where you can have as many different windows within a page as you want (see scoreboard pic on bottom). It seems like to do anything semi-complex you have to understand html and I'm learning more about it daily.

Season Ending UTR Top 10s (All Divisions)

Now that we're officially in the college tennis off-season I thought I'd take another look back at the year-end singles rankings across all divisions.  The one way to compare the rankings across divisions is to use each player's season ending Universal Tennis Rating so what I did is I pulled the UTR Top 10 from each division then at the bottom I have them combined into one list.  While Division 1 is by far the deepest you can see there are good players throughout all divisions.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/1 - 6/7

It was a very good week for former and current college players on the ATP Pro Tour with 3 former college guys and 1 current winning titles.  4 former college guys finished as runner-up as did 1 current player.  Georgia recruit Tommy Paul won the French Open Junior Championship though it won't be known for a few months whether he'll end up in Athens or choose to go pro.

Noah Rubin Turns Pro

After Wake Forest signed Dennis Uspensky this past week it seemed like the writing was on the wall and today it was confirmed that Noah Rubin has left Wake Forest and turned pro. Rubin came to Wake Forest when many thought he wouldn't after winning the 2014 Wimbledon Junior Championships so you've got to give him credit for at least coming and experiencing college tennis for one year.

After much contemplation I have decided to turn pro. It's been an unforgettable year at WF due to the amazing people I was surrounded by.

— Noah Rubin (@Noahrubin33) June 6, 2015