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Coaching News, Eubanks/Kennedy Win Opener in Atlanta, Roster Additions, College ATP Rankings

by | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog

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Florida State head coach Dwayne Hultquist announced the hiring of Ryler DeHeart as the Seminoles new associate head coach. DeHeart played collegiately at Illinois from 2003 to 2006 and then spent the five years afterwards on the pro tour. DeHeart had been the assistant coach under George Husack at Alabama for the last four years so now that means the Crimson Tide are on the market for an assistant.

St. Leo Director of Athletics Francis Reidy announced the hiring of Pablo Montana as the Lions new men’s and women’s head coach. Montana, who is a two-time National Coach of the Year, spent the last 12 seasons as the women’s head coach of D2’s California University of Pennsylvania racking up 259 wins and leading the squad to seven NCAA D2 quarterfinals. Montana replaces Chris Frusci who departed after two seasons to become the new women’s assistant coach at Baylor. Frusci was named the 2016 ITA D2 National Coach of the Year after leading the men’s team to a runner-up finish while the women’s team made the semifinals.

Buffalo has an opening for an assistant coach after Yevgeniy Shkodnik left to take a director position at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy. Shkodnik had spent the last six years in Buffalo with the first four as a player and the last two as an assistant coach.

Georgia Tech rising junior Chris Eubanks got knocked out in the first round of the BB&T Atlanta Open falling to Reilly Opelka 7-6(9), 7-6(5) but he had success on the doubles side. He and Georgia State rising senior Zack Kennedy knocked off Thiago Monteiro and Yoshihito Nishioka 3-6, 7-6(6), 1-0 (8). Next up they’ll face the winner of the Lindstedt/Pavic vs. Molteni/Zeballos match.

Charlotte released its schedule for next season and announced the signing of four new additions to the roster. Constandinos Christoforou (UTR 13.64), Leonardo Menezes (12.62), Max Benaim (11.79), and Michael Bass (10.08) will join 10 returnees from last season’s 12-8 team. The 49ers out of conference schedule includes Duke, Florida Gulf Coast, South Alabama, Winthrop, Elon, and more. FYI, Christoforou has two UTRs with a different spelling of the first name causing the difference – probably is right around 13.00.

Harvard head coach Dave Fish announced its four-member signing class with the Crimson set to welcome in Lucas Koelle (UTR 13.75), Galen Lee (13.24), Lane Leschly (13.07), and Logan Weber (11.92). Harvard went 16-11 last season and will have to replace a pair of starters after Nicky Hu and Kelvin Lam graduated.

The Decatur (IL) Herald & Review did a nice article on a few of the guys competing at the Futures event in town this week. They talked to Valpo senior Jeffrey Schorsch about qualifying for the main draw as well as 2015 Ohio State graduate Hunter Callahan about the weekly grind of the pro tour.

UCLA commit Evan Zhu won a main draw wild card into September’s Irvine, California, Futures event after defeating USC’s Logan Smith in the finals of the wild card tournament. Full results from the tournament are available at this link (H/T to Parsa).

I updated the ATP rankings of all current men’s players along with those that are expected to start this coming season. Below is the top 10 with the rest of the list at this link.

Player School ATP Ranking Points
1 Cameron Norrie TCU 419 100
2 Carl Soderlund Virginia commit 423 99
3 Aleks Vukic Illinois 603 48
4 Alex Rybakov TCU 684 36
5 Ronit Bisht Texas Tech commit 707 32
6 Thai-Son Kwiatkowski Virginia 758 27
7 Petros Chrysochos Wake Forest 790 24
8 Aziz Dougaz Florida State 801 24
9 Collin Altamirano Virginia 821 19
10 Henrik Wiersholm Virginia 851 19