TCU Tennis

[jake102]

Agreed. TCU has now won 16 out of 20 doubles points this year - that has been the key to the season. We then rely on Cam, Rybo and one other guy (it changes regularly) and then we win 4.

but Wake Forest, Ohio State and Virginia loom..

Yep. Our success is all about winning the doubles point and then Norrie and Rybakov setting the table.

IMO, only Wake Forest, Ohio State, Virginia and TCU have a chance at winning the championship this year. I actually think Ohio State is the worst match-up for TCU because it is the only team where Norrie and Rybakov will both be underdogs. I think we can beat Wake and think it's 50/50 against Virginia.

I would love to get up to the #4 seed and be matched with Wake while Ohio State and Virginia have to battle it out.

 

[Pure Purple]

A superb achievement by Coach Roditi and Team on winning another Big 12 Tennis Championship.

Kudos!!

 

[Hoosierfrog]

Not heard at a Baylor match...

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...interrupted-by-nearby-couples-loud-sex-noises

 

[Jared7]

Yep. Our success is all about winning the doubles point and then Norrie and Rybakov setting the table.

IMO, only Wake Forest, Ohio State, Virginia and TCU have a chance at winning the championship this year. I actually think Ohio State is the worst match-up for TCU because it is the only team where Norrie and Rybakov will both be underdogs. I think we can beat Wake and think it's 50/50 against Virginia.

I would love to get up to the #4 seed and be matched with Wake while Ohio State and Virginia have to battle it out.

The three best 1-2 punches in college tennis are TCU's Norrie-Rybakov, Ohio State's Torpegaard-Di Feo and Wake Forest's Chrysochos-Mansouri. Virginia's team is built on tremendous depth at all 6 spots. I agree that these are the 4 best teams. The USTA poll was released this morning, though, and TCU remains 5th (behind those 3 and UNC), so according to the "experts," you should add one more team to the list of contenders. UNC has won 25 matches this season but I haven't followed them much this year. And there's always the chance of a Cal beating one of those teams (like last year) if weather or other factors intervene and indoor play is required.

But first we need to beat Texas on Senior Day. With Sigsgaard, Ito and Goldhoff, they are formidable and Coach Center (formerly of TCU) is a really good coach. Texas, unlike, uh, Baylor, is known for being a really clean-playing team, with fewer fan outbursts and bad calls. It's a different atmosphere and game against the Longhorns - we'll need to be ready. I really want to win the regular season championship outright and not have to share it like last year (with Tech). Our point record against the Big12 this season, so far, is 16-1 (Tchoutakian got the only point against us last night ) so I like our chances.

 

[BearlyAFrog]

Yeah no doubt. I wish the no-ad deuce point would go away, at least during the NCAA tournament. Too often a few deuce points can completely skew things.

Agreed on that. I think Cam would've taken it as Benitez was running on fumes after going full throttle while Cam was still on cruise control. I did come away impressed with the sophomores ability to hang in there with the best player in college tennis.

This is the year for the Frogs to make their run. It takes a lot of pressure off knowing you've got 2 matches and at least 1 point in the bank every time you show up to play. His departure for the pros will surely be missed, but at least it will open up basically all of the scholarship positions for the up and comers.

 

[BearlyAFrog]

Texas, unlike, uh, Baylor, is known for being a really clean-playing team, with fewer fan outbursts and bad calls. It's a different atmosphere and game against the Longhorns - we'll need to be ready. .

Not going to argue perspectives and past outbursts, but I thought last night was incredibly tame. I was on Court 1 and after Coach Knoll gave his Roditi Rule Speech I can't remember a single incident taking place.

 

[jake102]

Agreed on that. I think Cam would've taken it as Benitez was running on fumes after going full throttle while Cam was still on cruise control. I did come away impressed with the sophomores ability to hang in there with the best player in college tennis.

.

Yeah I was pretty impressed with Benitez. If he can figure out some sort of backhand he has a bright future in college and professionally.

 

[Jared7]

Not going to argue perspectives and past outbursts, but I thought last night was incredibly tame. I was on Court 1 and after Coach Knoll gave his Roditi Rule Speech I can't remember a single incident taking place.

I'm glad Coach Knoll did that - after what happened v. OU, it was needed. It's great that Baylor has an active and involved fan base - a lot of schools don't. It helps make the Big12 the most exciting tennis conference which others emulate.

 

[tcumaniac]

Not heard at a Baylor match...

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...interrupted-by-nearby-couples-loud-sex-noises

Haha. One of the players in this match is Mitchell Krueger who is a local kid from Aledo.

 

[Jared7]

Haha. One of the players in this match is Mitchell Krueger who is a local kid from Aledo.

Krueger's actually a very good player (despite losing that match at Sarasota) - although he's from Aledo, he was born in Ft. Worth and was featured in a FWST article in December by Rusty Hall along with Cam and he's been featured as a NextGen star on the Tennis Channel. He's up to #182 in the ATP rankings, which, at present, is better than Norrie (#238), but Krueger plays pro tourneys year-round while Cam has done it only 7-8 months out of the year and the ATP is a year-long cumulative points ranking. He skipped college - we'll see whether that worked out better for him over the next few years.

TCU's Big12 championship is the school's 7th season or tournament title since joining the Big12 5 years ago and 3 of those have been from men's tennis (tying the baseball team). Our 11 match winning streak includes victories over 9 ranked teams, 7 road wins and 4 4-0 sweeps (3 of which were against Big12 teams). And it'd be a longer win streak but for the close (3-4) loss to #1 Wake. The match against Texas on Saturday is the regular season finale and, like Jake said above, baseball fans should head over there before the 3:00 game to check out the tennis Frogs at 1:00. After that, the Big12 tourney will be in Norman next weekend and we'll be shooting for yet another title. Then, we will almost certainly host an NCAA regional two weeks after that. Senior Day will honor Trey Daniel, Hudson Blake and Jerry Lopez and, based on his earlier article, Cam Norrie will also probably be playing his last TCU matches this Spring as well.

 

[Pharm Frog]

Krueger's actually a very good player (despite losing that match at Sarasota) - although he's from Aledo, he was born in Ft. Worth and was featured in a FWST article in December by Rusty Hall along with Cam and he's been featured as a NextGen star on the Tennis Channel. He's up to #182 in the ATP rankings, which, at present, is better than Norrie (#238), but Krueger plays pro tourneys year-round while Cam has done it only 7-8 months out of the year and the ATP is a year-long cumulative points ranking. He skipped college - we'll see whether that worked out better for him over the next few years.

Are you certain he's from Ft. Worth? Figured that he was from L D Bell where most Aledo athletes originate from.

 

[tcumaniac]

Krueger's actually a very good player (despite losing that match at Sarasota) - although he's from Aledo, he was born in Ft. Worth and was featured in a FWST article in December by Rusty Hall along with Cam and he's been featured as a NextGen star on the Tennis Channel. He's up to #182 in the ATP rankings, which, at present, is better than Norrie (#238), but Krueger plays pro tourneys year-round while Cam has done it only 7-8 months out of the year and the ATP is a year-long cumulative points ranking. He skipped college - we'll see whether that worked out better for him over the next few years.
.

I played tennis for Aledo. We always joked that it would be nice if he'd play for us.

Never actually met the guy, but from all accounts I've heard, he's a very, very talented player.

Is it pretty common for someone of his caliber to skip college? Or not necessarily.

 

[Jared7]

Are you certain he's from Ft. Worth? Figured that he was from L D Bell where most Aledo athletes originate from.

Well, I wasn't present at his birth, but his ITF bio says "Place of Birth - Ft. Worth, Texas."

I
Is it pretty common for someone of his caliber to skip college? Or not necessarily.

It depends. If you're a Top 5 junior; the incentive is to go pro immediately - like Krueger, Jared Donaldson or Ryan Harrison (and many others). Cam's recent article, however, pushed the benefits of going to college. That's gonna change in 2019, however, because the ITF is restructuring everything at the lower levels of pro tennis. There's gonna be far fewer Futures tourneys, but with more money, and there's gonna be a new "transition tour" with no (or very little) money - the objectives being to reduce the # of worldwide "pros" from 14,000 to about 750 and to make it more likely that the Top 750 can actually make a living at pro tennis. The transition tour will allow players to earn points so as to qualify for the Futures tourneys. The new system will disincentivize players from going pro early because they'd have to fight through the transition tourneys making no money and will probably help the college game. It will also disincentivize older players who clog up the Futures tourneys trying to hang on despite fading games. It's in the process of being discussed and no one knows precisely how it's going to work, so it's a work in progress at present, but it's in the works. In the short run (for about year and a half), it might incentivize guys to go pro earlier (so as to make the Top 750 now), but in the long run, it seems likely to increase the demand for getting U.S. college scholarships all round the world.

 

[BearlyAFrog]

Yeah I was pretty impressed with Benitez. If he can figure out some sort of backhand he has a bright future in college and professionally.

Couldn't be more true. His inside out forehand was pretty great, but then he's got this liability of a chip back hand which looks like a limp wristed pillow fight next to Norries crusher.

The way Cam slides that short angle cross court back hand in is a work of art.

 

[Hoosierfrog]

Haha. One of the players in this match is Mitchell Krueger who is a local kid from Aledo.

The playa in the apartment across the lake is apparently pretty good too...

 

[jake102]

Couldn't be more true. His inside out forehand was pretty great, but then he's got this liability of a chip back hand which looks like a limp wristed pillow fight next to Norries crusher.

The way Cam slides that short angle cross court back hand in is a work of art.

Yep... Benitez has an absolutely monster forehand but is just completely lost on the backhand. Norrie's backhand is unique, and has little margin of error, but it's pretty good. And his forehand has drastically improved over the past three years. You put Benitez forehand on Norrie and I think it's an ATP top 50 player.

 

[Jared7]

Collegetennistoday is reporting that Texas' Yuya Ito will not play tomorrow due to suffering a back injury against Baylor a week ago and that fellow freshman Christian Sigsgaard will be back at the #1 slot after being dropped last week. TCU hasn't won 3 in a row against the Longhorns for over 25 years (prior to Roditi's time as a player) and tomorrow would be a great time to do it. If you're into the twitter machine, Coach Roditi is outside the BLUU right now all bedecked in purple body paint and is offering free t-shirts to anyone that takes a pic with him and then tweets it. The word is that TCU will move back into the Top 5 in the ITA rankings if we can beat Texas and finish undefeated in Big12 play for the first time ever. And it's possible that we could win the Big12 with a two-game margin because OU's Andrew Harris is scheduled to play in the Bedlam match against the Cowboys for the first time in over 8 weeks (he's only played 8 matches all season after suffering a back injury against Northwestern's Strong Kirschheimer).

This is Rivalry Weekend in tennis and that means Cal-Stanford, Ohio State-Northwestern, Bedlam and TCU-Texas, who were both the Big12 pre-season favorites.

 

[Jared7]

Agreed on that. I think Cam would've taken it as Benitez was running on fumes after going full throttle while Cam was still on cruise control. I did come away impressed with the sophomores ability to hang in there with the best player in college tennis.

This is the year for the Frogs to make their run. It takes a lot of pressure off knowing you've got 2 matches and at least 1 point in the bank every time you show up to play. His departure for the pros will surely be missed, but at least it will open up basically all of the scholarship positions for the up and comers.

I don't know whether Cam is really the best college player - that's what the NCAA singles tourney will determine. He is the highest rated college player in the ATP rankings, but Mikael Torpegaard has been #1 in the ITA rankings virtually all year (Norrie is #2) and the only time they've ever played (in last year's NCAA semis), Torp won. One of Cam's goals, obviously, is to win the NCAA's this year and that's one of many reasons he came back to TCU this Spring. I agree on his groundstrokes - he's like a machine. And his lefty serve -especially to the wide court - has gotten even more wicked. He finished off the Benitez match - when he was serving for the Frogs' Big12 championsip - with 3 aces. Watching WFAA's Mike Leslie trying to even get a racket on it was funny - I sure wouldn't want to face it. One of TCU's advantages is that our top 3 players (Norrie, Rybakov and Nunez) are all lefties - they get a natural McEnroe/Laver/Nadal advantage on the wide court on their serves and their spins throw righties off. Other teams just don't have that - it's like having an ace left-handed reliever in baseball.

 

[Kyle101011]

Baseball gives out 11.7 scholarships. How many are given out in tennis?

 

[Pharm Frog]

Baseball gives out 11.7 scholarships. How many are given out in tennis?

Used to be 4.5 for men and 7 or 8 for women

EDIT: I just checked with another source of info and I think it's still 4.5 for men and 8 for women (for women tennis appears to be a head count sport at the D1 level)