Duquesne Athletic Director Dave Harper announced the hiring of Vanessa Steiner as the Dukes new Director of Tennis (Men’s/Women’s Coach). Steiner, who had been the women’s assistant the last two seasons, replaces Rob Gregoire who resigned on March 1st which was in the middle of his second year on the job. Steiner graduated from Boston University in 2011 but played at Duquesne in 2012 since she had a year of eligibility remaining.

Paige Madara was named as the new men’s and women’s head coach at Grinnell College (D3) in Grinnell, Iowa. Madara replaces Andy Hamilton who was recently promoted to Director of Athletics and Recreation after serving as the men’s coach for the last 21 years and the women’s coach for the last 9 years. Madara played at Wash U STL from 2009 to 2013 and was most recently the women’s assistant coach at Washington and Lee.

LSU head coach Jeff Brown announced the hiring of Martin Stiegwardt as the Tigers new assistant coach. Stiegwardt had been the assistant coach at Auburn for the previous three years and replaced Danny Bryan who recently took the head coaching job at Wichita State.

Davis Cup is back in full swing this week with the World Group, Group 1, and Group 2 starting on Friday while Groups 3 and 4 got started on Monday. If you missed my post from yesterday give it a look to see which players with college ties are participating for their host countries.

Virginia’s Thai-Son Kwiatkowski and Henrik Wiersholm, Georgia Tech’s Chris Eubanks, and Stanford Tom Fawcett are in Portland this week helping Team USA in preparations for its Davis Cup tie against Croatia. To read more about what they are doing you can check out this article from the USTA.

The Pac-12 Network announced a live streaming partnership with Twitter which will give the conference another outlet to show its Olympic sports which includes tennis. I’m not sure if you’ll need to be a current subscriber to the Pac-12 Network to view the stream so we’ll have to see how it goes next season.

2017 Conference Tournament announcements
Furman (Greenville, SC) will host the Southern Conference from April 21-23
IUPUI (Indianapolis, IN) will host the Summit League from April 28-29

Pro Circuit Update

#25 Steve Johnson (USC ’12) is into the quarterfinals at the ATP 250 in Newport, Rhode Island – next up #61 Donald Young.

#250 Daniel Nguyen (USC ’12) is into the quarterfinals at the $75K Winnipeg Challenger (Hard) after defeating #120 Tim Smyczek 6-2, 6-3 – next up #149 Go Soeda.

#196 Aleksandr Nedovyesov (Oklahoma State ’10) is into the quarterfinals at the $42.5K Poznan, Poland, Challenger (Clay) – next up TBD.

Virginia commit #479 Carl Soderlund lost 6-3, 6-1 to #30 Joao Sousa in the second round of the ATP 250 in Bastad, Sweden.

#500 Yannick Hanfmann (USC ’15) is into the semifinals at the $10K Kramsach, Austria, F2 Futures (Clay) after a 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-1 win over #713 Corentin Denolly – next up #695 Marek Jaloviec.

#540 Petr Michnev (Hawaii Pacific ’14) is into the semifinals at the $10K Brno, Czech Republic, F6 Futures (Clay) after coming back from 3-0 down in the third set to defeat #943 Laslo Urrutia Fuentes 6-3, 3-6, 6-3  – next up #1128 Pavel Nejedly.

Joao Monteiro (Virginia Tech ’16) is into his second-career quarterfinal after a 7-6 (13), 6-3 win over #1025 Nuno Deus at the $10K Idanha-A-Nova, Portugal, F8 Futures (Hard) – next up #1142 Tiago Cacao.

Samm Butler (SMU Rising Junior) is into his first-ever Futures quarterfinal after a 6-4, 6-1 win over #1692 Mohammad Akbar at the $10K Antalya, Turkey, F28 Futures (Hard) – next up #294 Yannick Jankovits.

Alan Gadjiev (Wake Forest Redshirt Freshman) earned his first career ATP points at the $10K Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, F15 Futures (Hard) after defeating #1081 Dante Gennaro 7-6(5), 6-3 in the first round and #999 Aria Jarajchi 6-2, 6-2 in the second round – next up #1064 Kamil Gajewski in the quarterfinals.

#1513 Jarmere Jenkins (Virginia ’13) and #998 Majed Kilani (Tulsa Rising Soph) will meet in the quarterfinals in Egypt after Jenkins defeated #859 Jose Vidal Azorin 7-6(4), 6-2 while Kilani got past Antonio Zucca 4-6, 6-1, 6-1.