The Road to THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP 2024
As we gear up for the year's first major championship, the L6 USTA event this weekend for 12U and 16U, we shake our fists at Mother Nature. Rain washed out the warm up to the major, the USTA Coed Green and Orange, on Saturday.
We looked forward to thirty-seven 10U players making big strides. They still will. And it didn't slow up the rankings or the buildup to this week's big time tournament. Eight-four participants will compete for the L6 grand prix and two hundred Tour points, as well as an automatic berth into September's Tour Championship.
As fate would have it on the calendar, three weeks of rankings points dropped from players' totals. That led to some stark realignments on Tour despite the rainy weather.
At the premier division, Braden Walter and Serena Provinse swapped places in the Top 10, the former improving one spot to eighth by nine points. Atlee Hilliard keeps her healthy 121-point lead in first place.
She also leads Jon Ozenci on the 16U Tour, by slightly fewer points, for another week. Caroline Peterson, Arnav Nadikatla, and William Van Horne each moved up among the Top 10 as Spencer Weiss lost pointed earned over a year ago. But Weiss landed safely at No. 8, just three points back of Van Horne.
The big winner at 16U was Richard Caddell, promoted for the first time into the Top 10. Similarly, Cornelia Touw slid into the Top 20.
Jon Ozenci maintained the No. 1 ranking at 14U, where he leads Carter Mills by 150 points. Van Horne closed the distance somewhat by taking third place, as did Tour Championship winner Bridget Zimmermann, who now sits at fifth. Multi-time event champion Zahra Doriwala gained entry to the Top 10.
Shiloh Auzoux was one of many to see a great 2023 success drop off the computer, but many other successes since then kept him atop both 10U and 12U leaderboards. Lara Dabney had been ninth but improved to seventh, though at 10U she's No. 3.
The other change at those levels meant that Thomas Huang took over No. 13 from Devin Leung, who fell just one spot.
The second major follows not long after our big May weekend, on June 2, at the UTR Spring Finals.
2024 Points Change
A change to the points applied to higher-level tournaments from lower levels should reflect ages and skills better from now on. It used to be that all points were halved when applied to a higher age group's rankings. Now, the points are halved each step up the ladder, not just once.
So a player can no longer earn 80 points at 10U and count them as 40 at 16U. They would be halved at 12U (40 points), again at 14U (20 points), then again at 16U (10 points). It provides the incentive without disrupting the older players' earnings too much.
However, a younger player earning points in an older tournament, much as Arnav Nadikatla did in this Tour Championship edition, is still a sure way to rise faster in those rankings.
Remember the newly added feature to the rankings: the Plus / Minus, which will tell you how far up or down the player has moved within the last week.
The full tables now look like this.
Each weekend this spring and summer, Tennis Central is bringing you USTA and UTR tournaments at Holton-Arms School. Earn points for advancing through each round, just like on the pro tours, and qualify for the TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP at season's end.
Bigger events offer more points, with the TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP offering the most, as well as prizes.
Check here for updates each week to the Tennis Central Tour Rankings, a 52-week points system based on the pro tours, as well as recaps of all the action and photos. We'll post the 2024 schedule soon!
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