• The KillerFrogs

TCU Men's Tennis - 2020-2021

Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
One thing that's become obvious from Fearnley's scorelines is he gets off to some rough starts in singles. He did miss a lot of the season obviously, but he's been back playing singles now for almost two months and this continues to be a problem. Here's his record by set:

1st: 6-6
2nd: 8-4
3rd: 3-0 (and was about to make it 4-0 today when play was halted)

With the way we've ordered the lineup, I think our biggest strength should be at #2 and #4 singles. We need consistent points out of Fomba and Fearnley, and quick points would be even better to put pressure on our opponents.
 
Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
Thought I would do a preview of our opponent tomorrow. Arizona State was really lucky to get past Wichita State today. Here are a few of their notable results this season:

1/31 @UT L 4-3
2/5 Pepp W 6-1
3/7 @ Baylor L 4-0
3/28 @USC L 6-1
4/2 @Stan L 4-3
4/25 Stan W 4-3
4/26 USC L 4-1

So in most of their meetings with top end teams, they lost pretty handily. But they did beat Pepperdine and Stanford and made it close early in the season in Austin.
 
Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
Here’s the singles lineup. Basically, I think we’re favored everywhere except maybe #3. Gray will also have a pretty good test.

#1 Nathan Ponwith (Sr) – 14-8 record at the #1 spot. Seems like he’s been around forever after signing with Georgia as the #1 US recruit. Transferred to ASU in 2018. Had a good conference tournament going 2-0 and then splitting sets with Cuckierman in a match that didn’t finish. But he got drilled today by Wichita State’s #1.

#2 Makey Rakotomala (Sr) – just 4-9 on the year playing in the #2 spot. He also lost today vs Wichita State. I will remember him for getting pummeled by Alastair Gray 6-3, 6-0 when we played them to open the 2019 season. When he’s played better opponents this year, he does play them close, but hasn’t won many. Fomba is a big favorite.

#3 Tim Ruehl (Sr) – 7-2 record at #3 and should probably be playing #2. Since moving down to #3 six weeks ago, he’s got wins vs UCLA, USC, Stanford (2x) and won easily today. Big challenge for Jong.

#4 George Stoupe (So) – 5-4 at #4 spot. Moved up in the lineup to replace Andrew Bolla (Sr), who’s only played once in the past month and didn’t play yesterday. Stoupe was winless in his previous six matches (4 losses) before today when he was the hero, winning the deciding point in a tiebreaker.

#5 Max McKennon (Fr) – 4-2 record. Missed basically all of February and March. But he won handily today.

#6 Christian Lerby (So) – 9-6 record from the #6 spot, which he’s held down for basically the whole season. Beat UCLA & Stanford in Pac12 tourney, but lost in straights today.

I won’t get into doubles except to say that they haven’t taken the point against many top-tier teams. The one exception was in the Pac12 final vs USC, after which they lost the first 4 singles points and the dual.
 
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Jared7

Jared7

Active Member
Ohio State, USC, A&M, Illinois, South Carolina and Arizona each punched their tickets to Lake Nona yesterday. There are 10 more regional finals scheduled today for the other slots. All are #1 or #2 seeds except for Memphis, Northwestern and Oregon - each #3 seeds which pulled upsets yesterday. So form is basically holding almost throughout the tourney.

Arizona State essentially terminated their program at the turn of the century, but 4 years ago, they re-started it and have achieved quick success. This is as far as they've gotten (Round of 32) since - if they make the Round of 16, it would be a tremendous success for them.
 
Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
We look pretty good early except for Fomba and Fearnley, who immediately went down a break. Just as I predicted. Fearnley back on serve now.
 
jake102

jake102

Active Member
So to back up my extreme annoyance at the current ATP ranking system and the negative impacts it has had on Norrie - he didn't even make main draw of the Rome Masters 1000 event. He had to play qualification (he was the #1 seed in qualies). Fortunately he won both his matches and made the main draw, but it's absurd.

His draw is relatively fortunate in that he plays a qualifier first round and then gets the winner of Davidovich Fokina and Dimitrov. Unfortunately if he wins both those matches, he gets #1 seed Djokovic.
 
Jared7

Jared7

Active Member
Purp said:
Reasonable excuse, but did Jared and Jake have to come help?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, TCU doesn't schedule its tennis events after checking my schedule first and there is no such position as full-time well-paid TCU tennis blogger so I could quit my jobs...Glad to see we won (which I only just found out).

The Round of 16 at Lake Nona (on Monday) will be #3 Tennessee v. Arizona, #6 North Carolina v. #11 Georgia; #7 TCU v. Ohio State; #2 Baylor v. #15 Mississippi; #4 Texas v. #13 South Carolina; #5 Virginia v. # 12 USC; #1 Florida v. #16 Illinois and #8 A&M v. Mississippi State. Arizona (over Kentucky) , Ohio State (over Wake) and Mississippi State (over UCF) are the only upset winners and unseeded teams in the octofinals. Florida. Baylor and Tennessee are probably still the favorites but anything can happen.
 
Jared7

Jared7

Active Member
jake102 said:
So to back up my extreme annoyance at the current ATP ranking system and the negative impacts it has had on Norrie - he didn't even make main draw of the Rome Masters 1000 event. He had to play qualification (he was the #1 seed in qualies). Fortunately he won both his matches and made the main draw, but it's absurd.

His draw is relatively fortunate in that he plays a qualifier first round and then gets the winner of Davidovich Fokina and Dimitrov. Unfortunately if he wins both those matches, he gets #1 seed Djokovic.
Click to expand...
Not automatically qualifying for Rome is probably why he skipped Madrid - he was scheduled to play the next day after the finals at Estoril but he probably figured that if he went deep there, he wouldn't have even been able to make the qualies at Rome. Some times, they adjust the schedule for top-ranked players, but he's not top ranked.

He's got Roberto Caballes Baena in the Round of 64 presumably tomorrow in Rome.
 
Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
Choose your path to the semis:

Path 1: Presbyterian, Ok State, Georgia, Tennessee
Path 2: Arkansas, AZ State, Ohio State, Baylor
Path 3: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Miss State, Florida

You could easily argue that Path 2 is the worst one in every round. For those who haven't committed the bracket to memory yet, path 1 is the #6 seed (UNC), path 2 is the #7 seed (us), and path 3 is the #8 seed (A&M). Getting Ohio State and Baylor back to back is really brutal.
 
Longfrog

Longfrog

Active Member
jake102 said:
So to back up my extreme annoyance at the current ATP ranking system and the negative impacts it has had on Norrie - he didn't even make main draw of the Rome Masters 1000 event.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see current UTR ranks. Realize not everyone subscribes to the conceit that UTR provides the truest player rating, but it's probably much better than either ITA rankings or ATP given the shifting methodologies, lack of play, etc.

These in particular seem a lot more accurate:

#28 Kudla
#31 Norrie
#62 Monfils
#72 Brooksby

Here are some notable rankings at the collegiate level:

#17 Kingsley (Oh St)
#19 Gray
#24 McNally (Oh St)
#26 Tracy (Oh St)
#33 Seelig (Oh St)
#41 Fomba
#50 Trotter (Oh St)
#57 Cash (Oh St)
#69 Aguilar (A&M; TCU '21)
#72 Jong
#78 Fearnley
#154 Jirousek
#274 Paroulek

Lui Maxted (TCU '21) is the #25 ranked junior in the world.
 

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