Walker Leaves Memphis for TCU, New Mexico's Dils Retires; BB&T in Atlanta Awards Qualifying Wild Cards to Rakitt, O'Shaughnessey and Tiafoe; College Tennis Combine Debuts Next Month in Cerritos, Calif.

One Division I coaching job was filled today and another one opened, with Lee Taylor Walker leaving the University of Memphis for the TCU women's head coaching job and Alan Dils retiring as men's tennis coach after 18 seasons at New Mexico.

Walker replaces David Borelli at TCU, although I was unable to find any official announcement of Borelli's departure and there is no mention of him in the release announcing Walker's hire. Here is the April article from the school's newspaper that revealed Borelli's retirement.

Dils will be replaced by associate head coach Bart Scott, who has been announced as the interim head coach for the 2014-15 season.

In other Division I college news, the new tennis facility at the University of Nebraska is now expected to be completed for the 2015 outdoor season, according to this release. I assume that's April of next year, if the outdoor season there is similar to what it is in the rest of the Big Ten conference.

The ATP tournament in Atlanta next month, the BB&T Open, has announced three qualifying wild cards.  Georgia Tech's Nathan Rakitt and Alabama's Becker O'Shaughnessey have received qualifying wild cards, as has Francis Tiafoe.  Both Rakitt(Marietta) and O'Shaughnessey(Macon) grew up in Georgia. For more on the field, see this article from the tournament.

A new event is taking place in Cerritos, California next month called the College Tennis Combine.  Scheduled for July 5 and 6 at the Cerritos Tennis Center, the event has invited college tennis coaches to evaluate potential recruits based on fitness and skill tests.  The fee to participate is $350.  For more on the event, see this release.

Logan Smith, Monica Robinson Win USTA National Open Hard Court Titles; Peter Smith and Sons; Pro Circuit Update; Bradley Drops Men's Tennis

Logan Smith (courtesy photo)

Seventeen-year-old Logan Smith and 19-year-old Monica Robinson won gold balls over the weekend in San Diego, taking the singles titles at the USTA National Open Hard Court Championships. Smith, who was in Europe playing ITF Junior events though the Grade A in Italy, returned home to Southern California for a few weeks, but he is heading back across the Atlantic to compete at the Roehampton Grade 1 and Wimbledon Junior championships.

Smith, who was unseeded in the tournament (his ITF junior ranking is 54) defeated No. 2 seed Deiton Baughman 6-4, 6-3 in the final. Baughman, 18, was the fourth seeded player Smith defeated in his seven wins.

Monica Robinson (courtesy photo)

Robinson, who just completed her freshman year at Notre Dame, was a No. 5 seed in the smaller women's draw.  She defeated unseeded 17-year-old Alexandra Valenstein, also from Southern California, 6-3, 6-0 in the final.

Both draws lost their No. 1 seeds, Brian Battistone and Trang Huynh, to last-minute withdrawals.

For complete results from the tournament, see the TennisLink site.

The Orange County Register recently published this article on the University of Southern California men's head coach Peter Smith(no relation to Logan) and his three tennis-playing sons. Learning the game from one of the best coaches in the country is certainly a great advantage for them, but there are always challenges when a parent coaches his or her child, challenges that are amplified when he or she has had so much success coaching others.  Right now Garrett Patton plays for his father Greg at Boise State and Eric Diaz for his father Manny at Georgia and I'm sure there are others, with Tanner Smith to join that fraternity next year.

In the only Pro Circuit event in the United States last week, unseeded Elise Mertens of Belgium won the $25,000 tournament in El Paso, beating No. 5 seed Ashley Weinhold 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.  Weinhold had barely gotten by Baylor junior Ema Burgic of Bosnia 6-3, 2-6, 7-6(6) in one semifinal, while the 18-year-old Mertens beat top seed Connie Hsu of Taiwan 6-2, 6-0 in the other semifinal.  Weinhold did get a title however, as she and Jamie Loeb(North Carolina) took the doubles championship. The unseeded team beat top seeds Hsu and Danielle Lao(USC) 4-6, 6-4, 15-13 in the final.

Bradley University announced on Friday that it was discontinuing its men's tennis program in favor of reestablishing men's indoor track. Bradley was the alma mater of former Kalamazoo Nationals referee and USTA president and chairman David Markin, for whom the tennis courts and a recreation building on the Peoria, Illinois campus are named. Markin died last year.

NCAA Individual Championships Slideshow, Videos

I'm closing the 2013-2014 college season with this slideshow featuring the singles quarterfinalists in singles and doubles semifinalists in the Division I Individual Championships last month in Athens, Georgia, as well as brief videos of the singles finalists. For a written recap of the tournament, see my article for the Tennis Recruiting Network.

Russians Sweep French Junior Singles Championships; Donaldson, Scholtz, Cunha Win Futures Titles

The reigning European 16s champions collected their initial junior slam titles today, with Russians Andrey Rublev and Darya Kasatkina claiming boys and girls singles titles at Roland Garros.

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Rublev, the No. 4 seed, was coming off a $15,000 Futures title in Moscow a week ago and he continued his excellent form today, defeating No. 7 seed Juame Munar Clar of Spain 6-2, 7-5 in the boys final.  Rublev won three of his early matches in third sets, but beat No. 2 seed Orlando Luz of Brazil in two in the semifinals and avenged an April defeat to Munar Clar without too much difficulty in the final. According to this article by Sandy Harwitt on the ITF Junior site, Rublev will take over the No. 1 position in the world junior rankings.

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No. 8 seed Kasatkina, who has said repeatedly that this is her last junior tournament despite turning 17 just last month, downed top seed Ivana Jorovic of Serbia 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-3.  She had a 4-0 lead in the third set, but had to save a break point serving at 5-3 to close out Jorovic.
Although there have been four Russian finalists since then, Kasatkina is the first girls winner at Roland Garros since Nadia Petrova in 1998.

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(left to right: Bellis, Vondrousova, Rosca, Ducu)

No. 7 seeds CiCi Bellis and Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic fell just short in the girls doubles final, with unseeded Ioana Ducu and Ioana Rosca of Romania edging them 6-1, 5-7, 11-9.  Bellis and Vondrousova led 7-5 and 8-6 in the match tiebreaker, but couldn't maintain that lead, with the more experienced pair, both born in 1996, capturing the title over the 15-year-old Bellis and 14-year-old Vondrousova.

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The French team of Benjamin Bonzi(left) and Quentin Halys won the boys doubles title, defeating Lucas Miedler of Austria and Akira Santillan of Australia 6-3, 6-3. Neither team was seeded.

In the final of the $10,000 Futures in Turkey today, 17-year-old Jared Donaldson won his first title, defeating top seed Nikola Milojevic of Serbia 6-3, 6-4. Donaldson didn't face a break point in the match and had eight aces (on clay), so coach Taylor Dent's efforts to make the Donaldson serve a weapon appear to be bearing fruit.

Nik Scholtz of Ole Miss won his second Futures title, beating former Rebel Tucker Vorster, also of South Africa, 6-4, 6-3 in the final of the $10,000 tournament in South Africa. The 23-year-old Scholtz, who appears to be undecided about returning to Oxford for his final year of eligibility, previously won a Futures in South Africa in 2012.  He and Vorster won the doubles title on Friday.

Henrique Cunha of Brazil, who completed his eligibility at Duke last year, won his third Futures title in singles (the first was way back in 2008) today in at $10,000 tournament in Thailand. Cunha, the No. 3 seed, defeated wild card Phassawit Burapharitta of Thailand 6-0, 6-0 in the final. Already at a career-high of 456 in the ATP rankings, Cunha will improve on that when these points are added in two weeks' time.

May Aces; Bellis Reaches French Girls Doubles Final; Smith Receives Wild Card for July's ATP Tournament in Atlanta; Donaldson Makes Futures Final

May was a busy month in tennis, and it resulted in 18 aces for my monthly Tennis Recruiting Network column.  As always, current and former college players as well as juniors are represented, some for the second straight month, some for the first time ever.  While you're there, check out the commitment announcement of blue chip Kyle Seelig, who will be an Ohio State Buckeye in the fall of 2015, and the spring recruiting class rankings, where the Stanford men and Florida women topped the lists.  TRN also had a question and answer session with New Balance on the inaugural High School Championships they have organized for next month in Boston. If you played high school tennis this past school year, you can enter. For more information, click on the ad to the left.

Three US juniors began the day still alive at the French Open championships, but only CiCi Bellis advanced to Championship Saturday.  Bellis and Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, seeded seventh, reached the girls doubles final, defeating unseeded Luisa Stefani of Brazil and Renata Zarazua of Mexico 6-4, 6-3. They will face the unseeded Romanian team of Ioana Ducu and Ioana Rosco, who beat No. 4 seeds Naiktha Bains of Australia and Tornado Alicia Black 6-3, 6-3.

Top boys seeds in the doubles, Stefan Kozlov and Andrey Rublev of Russia, lost to the unseeded French team of Benjamin Bonzi and Quentin Halys 6-3, 6-0.  Bonzi and Halys will play another unseeded team in the final, Lucas Miedler of Austria and Akira Santillan of Australia. It will be the second straight junior slam final contested between Miedler and Halys, who met in the Australian boys doubles final in January, with different partners.  Miedler and Bradley Mousley of Australia defeated Halys and Johan Sebastien Tatlot of France 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

The girls singles title will be decided between top seed Ivana Jorovic of Serbia and No. 8 seed Darya Kasatkina of Russia. Jorovic defeated No. 10 seed Francoise Abanda of Canada 6-4, 6-0, while Kasatkina downed Vondrousova 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.

Rublev, the No. 4 seed in singles, will play Juame Munar Clar of Spain in the boys singles championship. Rublev defeated No. 2 seed Orlando Luz of Brazil 7-5, 6-3, while Munar Clar beat Halys 6-4, 6-2.  Munar Clar has a recent win over Rublev in an April Grade 1 final in Spain.

For more on the singles semifinals, see this article from the ITF Junior website.

For complete draws and Saturday's schedule, see the Roland Garros website.

The University of Georgia announced today that rising junior Austin Smith has been awarded a main draw wild card into the ATP's BB&T Atlanta tournament next month.  The tournament has traditionally provided wild cards, usually in qualifying, for both Georgia and Georgia Tech student-athletes.

In Turkey, 2013 Kalamazoo finalist Jared Donaldson has reached his second Futures final, both in the past four months. Donaldson, the No. 3 seed, will meet top seed Nikola Milojevic of Serbia, who turns 19 later this month.

In South Africa, Nik Scholtz, a rising senior at Ole Miss, and Tucker Vorster, who played at Ole Miss until 2011, will decide that $10,000 Futures title in their home country on Saturday. They've already collected the doubles title there this week.

Eighteen-year-old Allie Kiick has reached the semifinals of the $100,000 Challenger in Marseille unseeded.