Pro Circuit Update, Wimbledon Wild Cards, Sara O’Leary Talks to the Media, Good Article on TRN, ATP Doubles Ranking (College Version)

Plenty of current, future, and former college players were in action today at pro events all across the globe. There are a pair of Futures events in the United States this week with one taking place on the clay in Rochester and another on the hard courts in Winston-Salem. Recent Virginia graduate Thai-Son Kwiatkowski won the longest match of the day with the former Hoo defeating TCU’s Alex Rybakov in 3 hours and 11 minutes. Rybakov came back from a 4-1 first set deficit to take the set in a tiebreak 7-5 but Kwiatkowski would get a split by taking the second set in a tiebreak 11-9. Rybakov led that second set tiebreak 5-3 but he never had a match point. Kwiatkowski broke Rybakov to start the third set and he’d add another break to go up 5-2 and would close it out with a love hold to win 6-7, 7-6, 6-2. 

Kwiatkowski will face recent South Florida graduate Sasha Gozun in the second round after Gozun defeated 16 year-old Jenson Brooksby 6-4, 7-6. Other players with college ties that advanced to the second round are Mikael Torpegaard (Ohio State), Winston Lin (Columbia), Alexander Knight (Michigan), Sam Monette (Indiana), Dennis Nevolo (Illinois), Charles Broom (Dartmouth), Cameron Silverman (Elon). Julian Zlobinsky (Texas), and Ohio State commit John McNally. 

Ryan Shane (Virginia), Wil Spencer (Georgia), and Riley Smith (USC) scored upset wins in Winston-Salem to join the nine other players with college ties in the second round. 

Shane defeated the No. 2 seed Alex Sarkissian (Pepperdine) in a pair of tiebreak sets. In the first set tiebreak Shane came back from a 4-0 deficit to take it 8-6 but Sarkissian rebounded in the second set and went ahead 3-0. Shane won three straight to even it at 3-3 and he’d break for 5-4 but Sarkissian broke at love to knot it at 5-5. After an exchange of holds, Shane raced out to a 6-0 lead in the tiebreak and ended up winning it 7-4. Shane will meet Henry Craig (Denver) in the second round after Craig defeated last year’s Kalamazoo Boys 18 runner-up Vasil Kirkov 6-1, 6-3

Wil Spencer upset the No. 3 seed Max Purcell 6-3, 7-5 while Riley Smith beat the No. 4 seed and former US Open and Wimbledon junior champion Filip Peliwo 6-4, 7-6(7). Spencer will meet USC rising sophomore Brandon Holt in the second round after Holt defeated UCLA commit Keegan Smith 7-6, 6-2. Riley Smith, who is the son of USC head coach Peter Smith and the cousin of Keegan Smith, will play recent North Carolina graduate Ronnie Schneider after Schneider defeated Luis David Martinez 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.

There are five players with college ties into the second round of the Portugal F8 Futures in Lisbon. JC Aragone (Virginia) ousted the top seed Alessandro Bega 6-4, 6-2 and will play Mississippi State All-American Nuno Borges after the Portugal native hammered Nuno Deus 6-1, 6-1. Javier Pulgar-Garcia (San Diego State), Gonzalo Escobar (Texas Tech), and Joao Monteiro (Virginia Tech) were the other three to advance to the second round.

Recent Cal graduate Andre Goransson advanced to his first quarterfinal of the year in Poland while Lukas Ollert (Auburn) is into the quarterfinals in Belgium. Most Futures events are still in the second round so I’ll have another round of updates tomorrow to give mention to the others that advanced to the quarterfinals. 

The All England Lawn Tennis Club announced several wild cards for the upcoming Wimbledon Championships. Cameron Norrie, who turned pro after his junior season at TCU, was awarded a main draw wild card into the singles draw while LSU graduates Ken (’07) and Neal (’12) Skupski and Joe Salisbury (Memphis ’14) were awarded main draw wild cards into the doubles draw. A couple of Texas graduates, Ed Corrie (’11) and Lloyd Glasspool (’15), were awarded wild cards into the qualifying singles draw. The release from Wimbledon is here with several more wild cards still to be determined. 

New Virginia women’s head coach Sara O’Leary talked to the media today and was asked about her coaching philosophy and what the ceiling is for UVA women’s tennis. O’Leary also talks about why she got into coaching and her playing days at North Carolina. There is also an article on UVA’s website that talks more about the hiring of O’Leary with Andres Pedroso, Director of Tennis/Men’s Head Coach, talking about the hiring process and why he chose her for the job.

The Tennis Recruiting Network (TRN) had an excellent article posted today by Fordham head coach Michael Sowter that talks about the growing epidemic of schools cutting tennis programs and a possible solution. Sowter talks about the new athletic directors that are just looking at the bottom line plus he gives examples of how dropping athletic scholarships can be a viable solution. 

This past weekend 22 players with college ties won pro doubles titles while another 13 finished as runner-up. Therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ATP doubles rankings have more players with college ties than the singles rankings. In this past week’s ATP rankings there are 23 players in the doubles top 100 that played college tennis compared to 3 in the latest singles rankings. If you expand it to the top 500 the percentage drops but the total number increases of doubles versus singles increases from 20 to 30. 

The current No. 2 player in the world, John Peers, played at Middle Tennessee State for three years before transferring to Baylor in the fall of 2010 for his final year. So far this year Peers has won just under $400,000 and throughout his pro career he has won just over $2.2M. The current No. 2 ranked singles player, Rafael Nadal, has won over $7.1M this year and just under $86M over the course of his career. 

The highest ranked player in the singles rankings that played college tennis is 2007 Georgia graduate John Isner who is currently ranked No. 21. So far this year Isner has won $563,000 and during his career he has won over $11.3M. 

If I left any names off please let me know and I’ll add them in for next time.