The latest USTA Top 25 is out with the Wake Forest men taking over the top spot while the Florida women remain at No. 1. Wake Forest moved up to the top spot after defeating Virginia last Friday which dropped Virginia down to No. 2. Ohio State and North Carolina remain at No. 3 and No. 4 while USC moved up one spot to No. 5. TCU made the biggest jump rising 10 spots from No. 16 to No. 6 while Florida took the biggest tumble falling four spots from No. 13 to No. 17.
On the women’s side Ohio State and Stanford moved up one spot each to No. 2 and No. 3 while North Carolina fell two spots from No. 2 to No. 4 after losing to Georgia Tech last Saturday. Mississippi State made the biggest jump coming up three spots to No. 19 while LSU dropped the most at four spots to No. 25.
The Oregon men and Florida International women entered the top 25 while the Tulane and Illinois men fell out as did the USC women.
Voter ballots available to the public: Bobby, Dallas Oliver (TRN), Bruce Waschuk (UTR Men/Women)
USTA Poll Information: there are eight college tennis “experts” on the voting panel, including yours truly, and each of us ranked 25 teams from numbers 1 to 25, with the first-place team receiving 25 points and the last-place team receiving one. When voting we were to consider strength of schedule, Top 25 wins/losses, road wins/losses and personnel adjustments for each program while also basing our vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation. For control, the highest and lowest outlying ranking for each team on the ballot was removed. Therefore, the maximum number of points a team can receive is 150. First-place votes were not tallied.
Voting Panel: Casey Angle (former ITA championships director), Virgil Christian (USTA College Tennis), Granger Huntress (Texas College Tennis), Bobby Knight (College Tennis Today), Dallas Oliver (Tennis Recruiting Network), Mike Patrick (former University of Tennessee women’s coach), Lisa Stone (Parenting Aces) and Bruce Waschuk (Universal Tennis Rating).
| USTA MEN’S TOP 25 | USTA WOMEN’S TOP 25 | |||||||||
| Rank | School | Votes | Prv | Chg | Rank | School | Votes | Prv | Chg | |
| 1 | Wake Forest | 149 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Florida | 150 | 1 | 0 | |
| 2 | Virginia | 145 | 1 | -1 | 2 | Ohio State | 143 | 3 | 1 | |
| 3 | Ohio State | 139 | 3 | 0 | 3 | Stanford | 132 | 4 | 1 | |
| 4 | North Carolina | 132 | 4 | 0 | 4 | North Carolina | 130 | 2 | -2 | |
| 5 | USC | 117 | 6 | 1 | 5 | Georgia | 129 | 4 | -1 | |
| 6 | TCU | 115 | 16 | 10 | 6 | Texas Tech | 117 | 7 | 1 | |
| 7 | Baylor | 114 | 8 | 1 | 7 | Georgia Tech | 116 | 9 | 2 | |
| 8 | Texas | 107 | 5 | -3 | 8 | Oklahoma State | 110 | 6 | -2 | |
| 9 | Oklahoma State | 105 | 7 | -2 | 9 | California | 102 | 8 | -1 | |
| 10 | UCLA | 99 | 9 | -1 | 10 | Michigan | 95 | 10 | 0 | |
| 11 | Texas A&M | 91 | 10 | -1 | 11 | Vanderbilt | 90 | 11 | 0 | |
| 12 | Georgia | 88 | 12 | 0 | 12 | Pepperdine | 89 | 11 | -1 | |
| 13 | California | 85 | 11 | -2 | 13 | UCLA | 75 | 13 | 0 | |
| 14 | Michigan | 68 | 15 | 1 | 14 | Baylor | 68 | 14 | 0 | |
| 15 | Oklahoma | 61 | 13 | -2 | 15 | Kentucky | 66 | 15 | 0 | |
| 16 | Stanford | 51 | 18 | 2 | 16 | Duke | 60 | 17 | 1 | |
| 17 | Florida | 50 | 13 | -4 | 17 | Auburn | 52 | 15 | -2 | |
| 18 | Georgia Tech | 48 | 17 | -1 | 18 | South Carolina | 44 | 18 | 0 | |
| 19 | Kentucky | 40 | 20 | 1 | 19 | Mississippi State | 42 | 22 | 3 | |
| 20 | Columbia | 39 | 21 | 1 | 20 | Arizona State | 41 | 19 | -1 | |
| 21 | Mississippi State | 32 | 19 | -2 | 21 | Texas | 39 | 20 | -1 | |
| 22 | South Carolina | 22 | 22 | 0 | 22 | Arkansas | 16 | 23 | 1 | |
| 23 | Cornell | 7 | 24 | 1 | 23 | Texas A&M | 10 | 24 | 1 | |
| 24 | Northwestern | 6 | 23 | -1 | 24 | Florida International | 8 | NR | – | |
| 25 | Oregon | 5 | NR | – | 25 | LSU | 7 | 21 | -4 | |
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Receiving Votes: South Florida (4), Tulane (4), Duke (3), Illinois (2), Memphis (2), UCF (2), Cal Poly (1), Wisconsin (1) Dropped Out: Tulane/Illinois (25)
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Receiving Votes: Mississippi (6), Tennessee (5), USC (3) Dropped Out: USC (T24)
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On Tuesday I reviewed the latest ITA team rankings along with the men’s singles and doubles rankings; today I have my review of the women’s singles and doubles rankings.
The top five in the singles rankings stayed the same although there was some shuffling. Ohio State’s Francesca Di Lorenzo remained at No. 1 while UCLA’s Ena Shibahara moved up one spot to No. 2 while North Carolina’s Hayley Carter dropped one spot to No. 3. Vanderbilt’s Astra Sharma and Baylor’s Blair Shankle swapped spots at No. 4 and No. 5.
North Carolina’s Hayley Carter and Jessie Aney remain at No. 1 in the doubles rankings Kentucky’s Mami Adachi and Aldila Sutjiadi moved up two spots to No. 2.
As I did yesterday, I have a deeper dive into the singles and doubles rankings with them sorted by school, conference, class, week-to-week change, Universal Tennis Rating, and UTR to ITA variance. This breakdown is available only to College Tennis Today subscribers so if you haven’t subscribed yet hop on board!
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Women’s Singles Rankings (click to view in separate window)
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Bobby, how do you think the elimination of the 10K futures (change to transition tournaments) and the reduction in the $25K tournaments in the ITF 2019 restructure (announced 3/31) with the goal of a base of 750 pro players will affect college recruiting? Will players skip college over the next 2 years to try and reach ATP 750 before the Futures are cut? Have you heard any rumblings from coaches on how this is affecting recruiting? Maybe it is too soon to tell. It could be that fewer players will play college tennis through 18/19 but from 19/20 on more glo al players will seek to play college tennis since it will harder to enter tournaments that earn ATP points.
On a different note, I would like to see a cap on the amount of scholarship money each school can give to foreign players. For instance, you get 4.5 scholarships for men's tennis and only 2 of the 4.5 can go towards foreigners. I played for an SEC school and love the different countries represented and friends I made, but do think there should be a cap per school.
In the long run, the proposed reduction in "true" pro players from 14,000 to 750 will almost certainly help college tennis because there will be far less potential money (if any) available to players ranked below 750. The only incentive to play "transition tournaments" will be to earn entry points to even be able to play ITF pro events. It appears that if one can make the Top 750, though, you might be able to make a living under the new system than under the current system. Moreover, the "transition tournament" schedule could be timed so that college players have a better chance at playing in them. It may also provide a disincentive to older 'fading' players from continuing to hang on by playing 'Futures' events.
In the short run, however, from 2017 to 2019, it would appear to provide an incentive to current college players to play as many ITF Futures events as possible in the race to make it to 750 so that they don't have to spend as much time playing "transition tournaments" when they graduate or otherwise leave school. It will also incentivize them to skip fall classes for the next two years and become a "pro" for 7 months out of the year rather than just in the summer.
More details are needed. Are they going to try to help current juniors who don't plan on going to college or part-time pros who are in college? When, where and how often will the transition tourneys be played? How many entry points will be required for eligibility to ITF pro Futures tourneys? How many entry points will be awarded for each level of the transition tourneys? Are transition tourneys going to be completely amateur?
I agree with Philip's comments – in the long run I think it's a positive for both the college game and for guys that are out there for years grinding it out and losing money hand over fist. Seems like it's been the trend for the last several years for most of the heavy hitters to skip the fall college schedule to play pro events and that should continue until this transition and may continue on afterwards for the guys that have real pro potential.
I'd be surprised if more players than usual skip college to play pro tennis – you'd think they'd see the average age out there now and know if they start grinding on the pro tour at 18 the chance of them lasting until they are in their mid-20s is next to zero.