ITA Women’s South Regional preview

Welcome back everyone!  This is the part of the article where I get to do some gloating.  My section has the defending national champs.  That’s right D3West and D3NE, the ASouth won something.  Anyway, here are the draws, USTA style:

http://tennislink.usta.com/Tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=194587#&&s=7Draws3

Time for some quick thoughts.

Who’s missing?

Emory graduated Rosen and Gordon and Cosme transferred.  Fuhr is not playing either so their presence in the draw is actually pretty thin.  Another thing to note is that Castro is playing singles, but not doubles.  Which is weird.  Sewanee also graduated a bunch of girls including Liles, which ends the Liles dynasty that dominated the area of Tennessee between Nashville and Chattanooga for almost the last decade.  Merchant, Childress, and Davila are all also strangely missing from the draw.

Early matches to watch

Unfortunately because so many players are missing most of the exciting matches won’t be until the later rounds and they’ll be between two Emory players.  There are a few though.

Perelman vs Ford

Ford is the #1 player from Millsaps.  She has struggled against players from Emory and Sewanee in the past, but has been solid against everyone else.  This will be an interesting look at one of Emory’s freshmen.

Lopez vs Crumbliss

I expect Lopez to win this one, but it could be an interesting matchup.  Crumbliss took out an Emory player last fall and Lopez is a little bit of an unknown.  I think there could be some nerves early to make this an ugly match.  If Crumbliss comes out firing we’ll have ourselves a match.

Vernoff vs Rao

This is a lot like the first matchup; an Emory freshman against the top player from a smaller school.  Matches like this will help give us an idea of what Emory team could look like in the spring or it could be a statement win from Rao.

Predictions

I haven’t said anything about any of the favorites so far.  Or the doubles for that matter.  I might tweet out some more in depth thoughts on these matchups as the weekend progresses, but for now here are my picks:

Singles Semifinals: Harding vs Su, Castro vs Satterfield

Singles Final: Harding vs Satterfield

Champion: Satterfield

Satterfield never seems to play well in the fall so I’m wary of picking her, but I have to after seeing how she played at nationals last spring.

Doubles Semifinals: Harding/Su vs Goodman/Vernoff, Demeo/Perelman vs Lopez/Satterfield

Doubles Final: Harding/Su vs Lopez/Satterfield

Champion: Harding/Su

I think a Sewanee team really could make a run like last year, but the top team they have entered in the draw runs into Harding/Su early.

That’s a wrap!  Welcome back to the blog everyone.  I hope you’re as excited for tennis to start back up as I am.