Intercollegiate Tennis Association Adopts ITF World Tennis Number as Exclusive Official Rating for College Tennis

The ITA, the governing body and coaches association for college tennis, announces today that the International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Tennis Number (WTN) is now the exclusive official rating of the ITA and college tennis.

All college tennis players will receive a WTN, as the ITA shares college match results with the ITF.  World Tennis Numbers are displayed on the worldtennisnumber.com website. Coming this month, the ITA will also display the World Tennis Numbers of college players on their individual ITA profiles, which will be found on the Teams section of the ITA website. 

Not sure exactly what this means for Brit college hopefuls or the very popular UTR tournaments such as the Progress Tour ? 

https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/2023/01/05/wtn-named-official-rating-of-college-tennis/

Coup Droit wrote:

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Colette gives quite an interesting couple of paras about it:

tenniskalamazoo.blogspot.com/2023/01/eddie-herr-videos-of-12s-14s-16s-finals.html

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 Collette raises some interesting points - especially the one re the current reliability of the WTN. UTR have also responded :

We are committed to continuing to lead the way forward with transformational solutions for supporting college tennis. We are increasing our investment in college tennis. We are providing what collegiate players and coaches deserve, which is innovation, media elevation, revenue generation, data, and analytics, said Mark Leschly, Chairman and CEO, Universal Tennis.

Instead of the significant financial investment and support consistently provided to the ITA, Universal Tennis believes the investment in technology, events, and sponsorship can be better spent directly for players and coaches.

As an alternative to the current process of entering match scores on the ITA website, Universal Tennis has established an easy process for college coaches to provide dual match results directly  it is simple and quick, and results will be quickly incorporated...

USTA and ITF have a history of poor decision making  eg when the ITF decided that ATP points should not be awarded at Futures except for SF and finals of $25K?  A poor decision which lasted ~ 6 months before reversal. Hopefully college coaches and players and wannabe players will not be the losers in all of this 

https://www.universaltennis.com/pr/universal-tennis-expands-its-commitment-to-college-tennis

twitter.com/algruskin/status/1613261733589618688

The NCAA individual events are moving to be played in the Autumn after the us open from 2024. Probably means the traditional wild card into the USO for the winners wont be given in future. And could well be held indoors in future as well.

AO doubles fillEd with college alumni

With main draw play now officially underway from the 2023 Australian Open, competing doubles players will get their first swings in from Melbourne Tuesday night, as 55 former collegiate athletes fill both the mens and womens doubles fields this year.

In the mens draw, eight of the Top-15 ranked doubles players heading into the Australian Open all come from the collegiate ranks. Neal Skupski (LSU) comes in as the No. 1 doubles player in the world and will be a part of the top-seeded team in the draw. The 2022 US Open Doubles Champions, Rajeev Ram (Illinois) and Joe Salisbury (Memphis), will be the second-seeded team in the draw as they look to retake the top spots in the ATP Doubles Rankings.

Other Brits: Julian Cash ( Mississippi St, Oklahoma St), Lloyd Glasspool ( Texas), Henry Patten ( UNCA Asheville) Womens doubles : Alicia Barnett ( Northwestern) 

Across the entire mens draw, UCLA leads all collegiate teams by placing four players into the 2023 Doubles Main Draw.

https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/2023/01/16/2023-australian-open-doubles-main-draw/

https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/newsletters/ link to subscribe 

-- Edited by Elegant Point on Friday 20th of January 2023 03:03:40 PM

Not much joy for the British women and their teams at the Kickoff Weekend - only Angela Blake (Stanford) and Holly Staff (Vanderbilt) through to the National Team Indoor Championships in Seattle.
Holly, playing at No. 3, clinched for Vandy with a 3 set win, to send them through.

More success for the British man though..

The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) has released the NCAA Division I Mens Top 25 Coaches Poll sponsored by Tennis-Point for February 1, 2023.

Preseason No. 1, Virginia, still sits atop the Rankings, coming in just above Ohio State (No. 2), TCU (No. 3) Brits on the team are Jake Fearnley, Lui Maxted, Jack Pinnington , Michigan (No. 4), and Kentucky (No. 5) who all looked dangerous this past weekend in their efforts to advance to the 2023 ITA DI Mens National Team Indoor Championships.

Tennessee (No. 10) is the only new team to make the jump into the Top Ten of the Feb, 1 Rankings after beating Louisiana and Oklahoma during Kickoff Weekend action, Brits on the team are Emile Hudd and Johannus Monday. After starting the year at the No. 4 spot, the Vols have rebounded nicely since falling to No. 5 Michigan and No. 14 Wake Forest earlier in the season.

Three new teams enter the ITA Coaches Poll this week as Middle Tennessee (No. 21), Louisville (No. 22), and Texas A&M (No. 24) Brits Matthis Ross and Rahul Dokia,  all make the jump into the Rankings.

The Coaches Poll sees very little movement within the Top Ten of the rankings after all 15 host schools came out victorious during Kickoff Weekend play for just the first time since 2011.

https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/2023/02/01/division-i-mens-collegiate-tennis-rankings-feb-1/

Million dollar deals for college athletes freed to earn like a pro

A new era in college sport dawned in 2021 after a Supreme Court ruling and a change in the law that ended  the long cherished principle of amateurism upheld by the NCAA.

Colleges cannot pay students to play, but alumni collective have channelled money mainly into mens teams. However female athletes arent missing out as theyre more adept at drawing endorsements with 77% of their money coming from brands and 23% from super fans.

Opendorse is the leading athlete marketplace and NIL technology company. Who serve the full lifecycle of supporting athletes: educating, assessing, planning, sharing, creating, measuring, tracking, disclosing, regulating, listing, browsing, booking, and more.
Their industry-leading NIL solutions help athletes and their supporters understand, build, protect, and monetize their brand value.

The only Brit student athlete I spotted on Opendorse, was Joe Tyler who was on the roster for Iowa until it closed mens tennis and then transferred to SDS in 2021.

https://opendorse.com/profile/joe-tyler

https://goaztecs.com/news/2021/6/7/mens-tennis-aztecs-add-transfer-joe-tyler-for-2021-22-season.aspx

Just spotted  a couple of the Memphis Brits are also on it

https://opendorse.com/profile/david-stevenson

https://opendorse.com/profile/oscar-cutting

-- Edited by Elegant Point on Saturday 4th of February 2023 07:13:47 PM