News and Notes - UTR vs. ITA, Davis Cup, Attendance Race, Miami Streaming, Me in Des Moines

The first thing I wanted to mention is that I wrote an article for the Tennis Recruiting Network that ran today with the topic being the Road to Tulsa. It talks about the teams that I think are contenders for the national championship along with the others that have some work to do so make sure you give it a read.

After the release of the latest Oracle/ITA rankings,  I wanted to do a comparison between those and the most recent Universal Tennis Ratings. Below is a chart of the top 25 men and women sorted by UTR and ITA rankings.

Weekly News

13 guys with college ties entered the US Open qualies but only 1 came through and that was 2011 Tennessee grad John-Patrick (JP) Smith who won all 3 of his matches in straight sets. Smith will join 7 former collegians in the 1st round of the Open which gets underway on Monday; 2015 NCAA Singles Champion Ryan Shane is the lone current college player to make the main draw. See below for qualie results and round 1 match-ups.

2015 NCAA Women's Doubles Champions Maya Jansen and Erin Routliffe of Alabama qualified for the doubles main draw after winning the US Open National Playoffs in New Haven. Typically the NCAA champions get a main draw wild card but since Routliffe is from Canada they had to get in the hard way. Personally I think the NCAA Champions should get a main draw wild card regardless of nationality but that's just me.

Kevin Anderson (Illinois '07) won his 3rd ATP singles title with a 6-4, 7-5 win over Pierre-Hugues Herbert at the Winston-Salem Open. Anderson wins $83000 and picks up 250 ATP points.

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.

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:

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.