UGA, UVA claim first fall NCAA individual — Talking college tennis with John Parsons
By Joey Dillon
The IX: Tennis Tuesday with Joey Dillon, Dec. 17, 2024
Howdy, y’all, Happy Tennis Tuesday! You know I will find any way to talk about the magnificence that is collegiate tennis and luckily, the NCAA recently held their first fall individual championship. Georgia’s Dasha Vidmanova defeated DJ Bennett from Auburn to take home the singles title, while Elaine Chervinsky and Melodie Collard of Virginia downed UCLA’s Olivia Center and Kate Fakih to bring home their program’s first national doubles title.
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(Editor’s note: This is the last Tennis Tuesday of 2024. The IX is off next week, and will return with Golf Thursday on Jan. 2, 2025.)
Well, I know you’re probably thinking “Joey, what about May Madness, when the team and individual events happen at the end of the school year?” I know, I know. In October, I penned that the Intercollegiate Tennis Association is testing a two-year trial moving the singles and doubles championships to the fall and keeping the team championship in the spring. When the fall has always been strictly individual, I admit it makes sense but I’m not a fan.
First, there were loads of qualifier events for players to get a bid into the crown jewel, held in Waco, Texas at Baylor and it just felt a little rushed. Personally, I loved that the individual championships featured the best of the season, including fall results and how they did throughout the team season. The fall season is also used by aspiring professional players to take the semester off and try their luck at earning ranking points before coming back for the spring. With this format, some of the top players couldn’t make the tournament so it bears asking if the winners have an asterisk by their name.
There just wasn’t as much excitement behind this year’s event. I’ve spoken with college tennis insiders and coaches who just aren’t a fan of the process. The ITA’s big argument is player welfare, as many of the individual qualifiers come from teams that advance deep into the team tournament. That means that players who qualify in both divisions and play in the team tournament could be playing over a dozen matches in a 10-day period. Factor in missed school time and sure, it could become a problem. I would personally like to see the team season move up a week and start the individual tournament a few days after the team event to let the student-athletes recover physically and mentally. You could even argue for having it a full week after for students to return home and finish up their classes — though is it economically or physically feasible?
Last week, the USTA announced a 10-year agreement for their National Campus in Orlando to host the team championships starting in 2028 and are in the running to host the individual championship should it continue after the trial ends in the 2025-26 school year. They’re hoping it will create an environment like the College World Series you see for baseball and softball. The USTA has the infrastructure and will be building more indoor courts with viewing, but like John Parsons talks about in our Five at The IX, there’s quite a bit that needs to be done.
Now, lets talk about the on-court action. Vidmanova became the sixth female to have won both the NCAA singles and doubles championship in their career following her doubles crown last year. She was my favorite to win the event after a very successful summer and fall campaign on the ITF World Tour amassing a 40-8 singles record. She won two W35 and a W15 title and also reached two W15 finals, a W75 semifinal and two W100 quarterfinals as a qualifier to break into the Top 350. Because of their performance in Waco, Vidmanova and Bennett will be part of the ITA’s ITF/WTA accelerator program awarding top performing collegiate players spots in tournaments.
In doubles, the road Chervinsky and Collard traveled was not for the weary. The American-Canadian duo were pushed to match tiebreakers in all five of their matches and defeated the all-freshmen duo of Center and Faikh, who won the USTA 18s national title and received a U.S. Open wildcard as a result this summer. It capped an incredible week for Chervinsky, who destroyed top-seeded Mary Stoiana to reach the quarterfinals and earn All-America honors. The two seniors spoke out about how the new switch to the fall setup was a welcomed adjustment and afforded them the opportunity to compartmentalize the different seasons, giving them more energy and focus. The duo joined a list of national champions that includes two-time champion Danielle Collins (current WTA No. 11) and 2021 winner Emma Navarro (WTA No. 8 and the 2024 WTA Most Improved Player).
I’ll be open to the fall season next year and hope that it works out as ITA administrators hope. Perhaps I’m a traditionalist and enjoy the fight the end of the season brings but I’m not sure if the best 64 singles players and 32 doubles teams were fully represented. Time will tell. However, be sure to scroll down to hear from my favorite college tennis expert, No Ad, No Problem‘s John Parsons, but now we’re on to links!
This Week in Women’s Tennis
Viktorija Golubic returned to the Top 100 after winning the WTA 125 Open BLS de Limoges, the official final event of the 2024 WTA season.
Stacey Allaster, the former WTA CEO and current U.S. Open Tournament Director, announced she’s transitioning out of her role following next year’s event.
Jon Wertheim gives his explanation on why women’s tennis hasn’t really been mentioned in the conversation in the rapid rise of women’s sports.
Two players you will want to keep an eye out next year are the super crafty Aoi Ito and rising Turkish star Zeynep Sonmez.
Ons Jabeur captured two player service awards while Jasmine Paolini’s coach Renzo Furlan was named WTA Coach of the Year. The tournament award winners were Indian Wells, Charleston and Hong Kong.
At the Australian Tennis Awards, Pam Whytcross received the Spirit of Tennis Award for her contributions to the game as a player and then her work with the WTA as one of their Tour Supervisors.
Melanie Oudin was once touted as the future of American tennis, but the 2011 U.S. Open mixed doubles winner is now behind-the-scenes as a coach for the USTA.
The Lawn Tennis Association, Britain’s governing body for tennis, rolled out their new transgender and nonbinary policy banning those who aren’t cisgender women from competing in their events.
The local batch of the women’s main draw wildcards for the Australian Open. Iva Jovic won the United States’ wildcard and the French recipient has yet to be named.
Tennis.com named Jasmine Paolini’s epic third-set tiebreaker win over Donna Vekic in the Wimbledon semifinals as their WTA match of the year, while WTA fans crowned Zheng Qinwen with their Shot of the Year title
I’m dizzy thinking about this, yet Coco Gauff makes this look easy:
Genie Bouchard took a pickleball to the eye, but fortunately there was no serious damage.
Tweet of the Week
This isn’t women’s tennis related, but queer representation in tennis had only been with the WTA until last week. ATP No. 401, Joao Reis, publicly came out in an Instagram post dedicated to his boyfriend. He’s the first active out ATP player and spoke about being the representation he wished he had when he was younger.
Five at The IX: No Ad, No Problem’s John Parsons
First off, on court we saw Dasha Vidmanova take the singles and the duo from Virginia win doubles. What were your takeaways from rhe action in Waco? Who can you see 1. Being a headline for the spring season and 2. Follow in the footsteps of players like Emma Navarro and Danielle Collins on the WTA Tour?
While we saw many surprising runs throughout the tournament, it ended with some predictable winners. Vidmanova played many ITF events after her junior season and has risen to WTA #325 — one of the highest-ranked players in college right now. For the Virginia duo of Collard and Chervinsky, they’ve been one of the best pairs in college for a few years now combining Chervinsky’s lethal ground strokes with Collard’s soft touch at net.
There are some players that didn’t compete in Waco that should be headline players like Maya Joint of Texas, but of those who competed in Waco, 2025 is now Dasha Vidmanova’s season to headline. After claiming a NCAA singles and doubles title in 2024, she’s a team title away from being the third woman in NCAA history to win all three titles in her career. I like her chances to put together a similar final season like we saw from Navarro and Stearns.
You’ve been attending the NCAA tournament for over a decade but this is the first time they’ve separated individuals from the team. It’s part of a two-year trial. What are your thoughts about it and what do you hope to see for the second year? Do you see the fall individual/spring team format staying after next year?
It still feels odd to claim a NCAA champion prior to the team season, and only based on two months of play. Putting the oddity of change aside, the promise of the NCAA fall individual championships didn’t deliver. There were visions for better coverage since it didn’t compete with ATP or WTA events, more attendance, etc. That wasn’t the case; it felt like just another college tournament.
From my conversations, most coaches don’t love the new format. It robs them of an extended development period, especially to work with freshmen, and requires a lot more travel chasing NCAA qualifying opportunities.
The players seemed mixed — but that’s biased, as I only spoke to players in press who were winning! I’m not sure if this will stay, but if the 2025 event (played in Orlando) isn’t better broadcasted with more fans, I don’t see much upside.
It was just announced that the USTA National Campus will be hosting the team championships for 10 years starting in 2028. Is it a smart move to try and copy what baseball/softball are doing? Should one site be used or should it rotate?
Ah, the classic question! Does college tennis need an Omaha? When I left Waco, prior to hearing the 10 year announcement about Orlando, I thought if they’re going to keep the fall individual tournament then I’d be open to that being annual in Orlando at the USTA National Campus and keeping the team event on college campuses in May. With that structure, you’d only have three rounds for a college campus to host, something most facilities are able to do. Plus, you’d only continue to incentivize schools to invest in tennis, while giving the fall event to Orlando — one of only a handful of locations where weather shouldn’t be an issue.
Conceptually, Orlando can make a ton of sense. It’s easy to get to with the airport just a few minutes away, lots of hotels, restaurants, things to do.
But the USTA hasn’t made good on a lot of promises. They’ve hosted three times now (2019, 2021, 2023) and each year has been worse. The 10 year announcement claims they’ll be making investments to improve the infrastructure, but I’ve never sensed in my three experiences there that the USTA was very invested in hosting a world class event. Now, they do it with the US Open, so I’m open to — and hoping! — that they prove me wrong moving forward.
Women’s college sports are continuing to rise, especially volleyball and basketball. What do you think needs to be done for college tennis to become more “mainstream” or is there a ceiling because it’s a non-revenue sport?
This questions keeps me up at night. Women’s tennis is the most lucrative women’s sport in the world — just look at the list of highest paid female athletes. But women’s tennis is a bottom tier collegiate sport — why?
There are two things that need to improve:
1. Butts in seats
2. TV and streaming coverage
It might be a chicken or the egg question, so you have to invest in doing both.
The last ten years have seen a lot of changes to collegiate tennis. If you were in charge, what would you implement or take away?
I would focus all my change on accomplishing the goal of getting more people to be college tennis fans and meeting the improvement areas I mentioned in my previous answer. A few ideas that span what schools can do vs. the ITA:
1. Partnerships with college club teams and local clubs
Create a competition with the club team on who can drive the most fans over the course of a year and reward them with lessons or hitting opportunity. Schools need to create a fun environment.
2. Third set tiebreak for singles in dual matches
This is painful and I know it’s controversial, but most college tennis matches are still too long. This would help dramatically to make it fit within a more concrete time window. I would explore it.
3. Invest in marketing
Right now, the next WTA stars are playing college tennis. Danielle Collins, Emma Navarro, Diana Shnaider all played college tennis. The latter only 2-3 years ago. There has to be a marketing push to highlight these stories so that the average WTA fan knows about, and shows up to, their local college matches. That’s the biggest priority — there are tons of recreational tennis players in the US and WTA fans, but we’re not converting them to be college tennis fans and that’s a problem.
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