The ITA released its preseason rankings today with Oklahoma’s Axel Alvarez #1 in the men’s singles rankings and Stanford’s Carol Zhao #1 in the women’s singles rankings. Georgia’s Austin Smith and Ben Wagland are the men’s #1 doubles duo with Florida’s Brooke Austin and Kourtney Keegan the women’s #1 duo.

As you comb through these preseason rankings and wonder how so-and-so ended up where they did I’ll let you in on a little secret that some know and some don’t – the preseason rankings are just the year-end rankings from the previous season with all the graduating seniors pulled out.  They also pull out returning players that aren’t enrolled in the fall.

The most interesting part of the preseason rankings (for me) are looking at the Top 10 Newcomer/Freshmen rankings. There are a couple of guys that would have made the list (IMO) but they aren’t enrolling until January or aren’t currently showing on rosters – Alex Rybakov (TCU 14.59), Dennis Uspensky (Wake Forest – 14.19), and Ryotaro Matsumura (Kentucky – 14.10)

Below is a chart looking at the ITA preseason top 50 versus the UTR top 50 – here is the link to the google doc if you’d prefer to view it that way.