By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
One of the main topics I have been asked about lately by tennis friends, fans and people in the tennis industry is…. Why are the NCAA Singles and Doubles Singles Championships now being played in the fall?
“Could there be less fuss about NCAA people? Why the hell did they postpone it?” was a text message I received this week from a long-time professional tennis manager. It was also a topic of conversation during my tennis matches in Vero Beach, Florida, with former college players and avid tennis and sports fans.
The NCAA and the College Tennis Brain Trust decided on a two-year pilot program that began last fall in which the singles competition would be played in the fall and the team competition at the end of the spring season would be played in May. Last season, the NCAA singles and doubles tournament was held in November at Baylor University of Waco, Texas, followed by the team event in May, also at Baylor. For the 2025-26 season, the USTA National Campus at Lake Nona, Florida, will host the NCAA singles and doubles tournaments in November, while the University of Georgia will host the team event in May. The change confuses many fans and the event seems to be increasingly forgotten due to lower visibility and a weaker field of participants.
Traditionally, the best college players of late have used the fall season before the team match season to compete in lower-level pro events on the Futures and Challenger Tours. For example, future top 10 star Ben Shelton from the University of Florida began to gain his first experience in professional tennis in the fall of 2021 when he played on the US Tennis Association Pro Circuit in the United States. Prior to the USTA’s efforts to host more pro circuit events in the United States, particularly in the fall season, the top college players played a full fall season of college tennis.
Top college players who missed the tournament at Lake Nona this year because they played professional tennis events in the fall include Oliver Tarvet of the University of San Diego, who famously reached the second round of Wimbledon this year, Rafael Jodar of the University of Virginia, who won two ATP Challenger-level events this fall and is now ranked No. 168 in the world, and Ben Kittay, last year’s runner-up in the NCAA doubles. Michael Zheng, the reigning NCAA singles champion from Columbia University, also played on the Pro Tour this fall and, like Jodar, cracked the top 200 in the ATP singles rankings. He reportedly had no plans to play at the NCAAs this fall and defend his title. However, he only decided to play after an early loss at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Challenger. There’s one big name missing on the women’s side: Auburn’s DJ Bennett, who reached the NCAA singles final last fall. Bennett did play in the fall college season, but because she collapsed during the shortened fall season of about seven weeks required to qualify for the NCAAs in November, she did not qualify for the field. Instead, she competed in a $15,000 USTA Pro Circuit event in Clemson, South Carolina and won the title.
One person locally at Lake Nona even said that this year’s NCAA champions should have an asterisk next to their name in the history books because of the weakened field. The NCAA champion cannot legitimately say he is the best player in college tennis this season, the person said. But much like the boycotted Wimbledon in 1973, as the years go by, no one will remember who attended the event and who didn’t. If you are the NCAA Champion, you will always be remembered as the NCAA Champion and you will have that on your resume for a lifetime.
Traditionally, the USTA granted the winners of the NCAA singles and doubles championships a wild card entry into the US Open. 25 years ago, this rule was changed so that it was only awarded to American winners of the NCAAs. Due to the NCAA’s move to the fall, which is a full nine months away from the upcoming US Open (and likely due to the likelihood that top college players would likely skip the fall season – and the fall NCAAs – to compete in professional events), the USTA has elected to withdraw its automatic invitation to the NCAA champion US Open to Americans, diminishing the prestige of an NCAA singles or doubles tournament. Instead, the USTA created an “American Collegiate Wild Card Championship” tournament in which invited American college players play a mini-tournament on the USTA National Campus and the winners receive US Open wild cards.
As college tennis struggles to gain more attention from major tennis and sports fans, hosting the NCAAs in the fall is proving to be a bigger challenge in breaking out of the crowded sports landscape. Most sports fans pay more attention to college football, the National Football League, and the beginning of college basketball. At Lake Nona, I heard that many sports information and communications staff who normally accompany teams to promote their results to the local college market did not attend the event or had to leave early because their colleges needed them and their talents at football and basketball games. While in the spring season, when tennis doesn’t have to compete for the attention of football or basketball, the sport of tennis gets more attention. In November, most tennis fans and people in the industry are suffering from “tennis fatigue” after the long season, making it even more difficult to capture this group’s attention with an NCAA tennis event in the fall.
John Parsons is perhaps the leading media voice for college tennis with his podcast “No Ad, No Problem” and his Twitter/X handle @JTweetsTennis. He and I recorded a conversation during the singles and doubles round of 16 day at the 2025 NCAAs on Thursday, November 20thTh about this “mystery” about the NCAA fall vs. spring tennis event, which you can listen to here: “Why is NCAA tennis singles now played in the fall?” https://youtu.be/9ksaC5-w-Jg?si=F2LJhaWEUG0Nos5H via @YouTube
One of the most well-known names in college tennis is Reese Brantmeier from the University of North Carolina. While I was on site at the NCAAs, I chatted with her about the Fall vs. Spring NCAA Individual Championships and she offered some interesting perspective from a player’s perspective. Brantmeier was a key member of North Carolina’s 2023 NCAA Championship team and was considered the favorite to win the individual championships, which were held immediately after the team event this year. She’s more of a fan of separating the individual and team championships into a fall season and a spring season.
“I love that the fall is very individual-focused, so the spring can be purely team,” she said. “Because I think that helps people really embrace the team aspect and not worry so much about the individuality. Because I think since the tournament is geared toward the end of the spring, there’s always that voice in the back of your head that says, ‘Oh, I have to have my personal ranking. I have to qualify for the individual tournament.’ And I just really like that it’s all about the team.”
“That’s why I think it’s good that it’s separate in the fall,” she continued. “I think it’s still in the testing phase, so I think there are definitely some issues with the logistics of getting around the qualification system.”
After Brantmeier and her North Carolina teammates won the NCAA team title in 2023, Brantmeier couldn’t immediately turn around and compete as one of the favorites in the individual competition, losing in the first round.
“It was a big challenge for me, and I was a newbie. I didn’t handle it very well,” she said. “I reached probably the highest peak I’ve ever had in this sport and that was my goal that I’ve been working towards throughout the team season. We reached that goal and then I was so excited and then I had to turn around and play the first round. So it was really a challenge.”
“And physically at this point,” she continued. “You played a full season, you played back-to-back team games, which are obviously the most demanding games you get all year, and then to have to turn around and have to play a first round was a big challenge. As a higher seed, I lost the first round. So from my experience, I would definitely be committed to taking that opportunity to focus on that in the fall.”
However, Brantmeier wasn’t the only one among the top seeds in the NCAA to lose at the start of the individual tournament right after the team tournament, as NCAA tennis history documents. I wrote a possible solution to this “exhaustion problem” caused by holding singles and doubles competitions immediately after the conclusion of team competition here: “Here’s a better NCAA tennis schedule – how about a Tennis Final Four?” https://primenewsdesk.co.in/heres-a-better-ncaa-tennis-schedule-and-how-about-a-tennis-final-four/21989 However, these upsets are not entirely due to exhaustion or disappointments from team competition, as was the case at these 2025 championships at Lake Nona, when the women’s No. 1 seed and overwhelming favorite, Valerie Glozman of Stanford, lost in the first round of the competition 1 seed, Jay Friend of Arizona, lost in the second round. The No. 2 seed, Duncan Chan of Texas Christian, lost in the first round and the No. 3 seed, Aidan Kim of Ohio State, lost in the second round. The singles tournament for men and women in 2025 was peppered with other big surprises.
However, Brantmeier acknowledged that more attention is focused on college tennis in the spring.
“Obviously they do a great job promoting the team event and it builds anticipation for the entire team season,” Brantmeier said. “So I completely understand that in May everyone is in that tennis mentality. So it makes sense that it was that way at first. But I’m excited to see what happens next because I can see both sides of it.”