Big Change To The Fall Finale, FloTennis Feature on Redlicki, Trouble in Athens

Tagged with: FloTennis, Georgia, Mike Redlicki, Oracle, Oracle ITA National Fall Championship

Oracle Corporation and the ITA announced on Tuesday that there will be big changes to the final major event of the fall. The National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships, which began in 1978 and have been held in New York for the last several years, will be moving to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and will be renamed the Oracle ITA National Fall Championship. In addition to a new name and new location the event will also be expanding the field. In the past it was a 32-player singles draw and a 20-team doubles draw but starting this November it will be a 64-player singles draw and a 32-team doubles draw.

The ITA is still working on the details on what it will take to qualify but it sounds like it will probably be similar to what was already in place which was a combination of the winners from the ITA Regional Championships, the All-American Championships, the Oracle ITA Masters, and those that were highly ranked. The first Oracle ITA National Fall Championship will take place on November 2nd through 5th.  

“Oracle is committed to tennis, both at the professional and collegiate level,’’ said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. “While the top professionals get well-deserved attention, we also want fans to be able to experience the excitement of collegiate tennis in this incredible venue.’’

The full release, which is available here, also lists all the events that Oracle currently sponsors. Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, who played at Baylor in the late 70s, has done a tremendous job supporting college tennis both through Oracle and through his own generous donations. If college tennis could find a few more Oracles and Mark Hurds the future of college tennis would be secure for decades to come. Let’s hope more former players, that have excelled professionally, take notice so we can start talking about bringing programs back instead of seeing them go away.  

 

 

FloTennis released its latest documentary today titled Redlickilous which talks about the collegiate career of Arkansas’s Mike Redlicki. The 6’9″ lefty, who won what we now know was the final National Indoor Intercollegiate Championship, started his career at Duke but after two years was dismissed from the team. After taking 18 months off he ended up at Arkansas and the rest is history.

This was FloTennis’s second documentary with the first debuting in late March called “The Streak – Steve Johnson”. If you missed that one you can check it out here.  

 

 

The NCAA Round of 16 gets underway in less than 36 hours but right now it seems the biggest story is taking place off the court at the University of Georgia. This past weekend both Bo Hodge, Georgia men’s associate head coach, and Drake Bernstein, Georgia women’s associate head coach, were absent during the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament and it was reported by Chip Towers of DawgNation that both had been suspended for unknown reasons. Earlier today Towers reported that police were investigating an alleged drug theft within the Georgia tennis program though no individuals were named in the preliminary report. So far there has been very little comment from men’s head coach Manuel Diaz or women’s coach Jeff Wallace about the report and as of this time it’s still unknown when or if Hodge or Bernstein will rejoin their respective coaching staffs. 

This obviously isn’t the kind of story that I wanted to post just hours before the biggest event of the year but its definitely newsworthy and I’m sure it will be a big topic of discussion throughout the tournament. The Georgia men take the court on Thursday at 4 p.m. ET against USC while the Georgia women play on Friday at 4 p.m. ET against Pepperdine.