Why Are The NCAA Individual Tennis Championships Held In The Fall?

By Randy Walker

@TennisPublisher

One of the major topics that I have been asked about recently by tennis friends, fans and from people in the tennis industry is…. why is the NCAA singles and doubles individual championships now played in the fall?

“Could there be any less buzz surrounding NCAA individuals? Why the heck did they move it?” was one text I got from a long-time pro tennis executive this week. It was a topic of conversation as well during my tennis games in Vero Beach, Florida, made up of former college players and avid tennis and sports fans.

The NCAA and the college tennis brain trust decided to have a two-year pilot program, which started last fall, where the individual events would be staged in the fall and the team event would be played at the end of the season in the spring in May. Last season, the NCAA singles and doubles tournament was played at Baylor University of Waco, Texas in November followed by the team event in May, also at Baylor. For the 2025-26 season, the USTA National Campus at Lake Nona, Florida is the host for the November NCAA singles and doubles tournaments while the University of Georgia will host the team event in May. The change has many fans confused and the event seemingly falls deeper in obscurity with less visibility and also a weaker competitive field.

The top college players have traditionally of late used the fall season, before the team-match season, to play lower-level pro events on the Futures and Challenger tour. For example, future top 10 star Ben Shelton of the University of Florida started to cut his teeth in pro tennis in the fall of 2021 playing on the U.S. Tennis Association Pro Circuit in the United States, which not only helped spring-board his pro tennis career, but helped him gain valuable big-match experience to help him win the NCAA singles title months later when the event was played just after the NCAA team event. Before the USTA’s efforts to create more pro circuit events in the United States, particularly in the fall season, the best college players would play a full fall season of college tennis.

Among those top college players missing the tournament this year at Lake Nona because they were playing pro 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 NCAA doubles runner-up. Michael Zheng, the defending NCAA singles champion from Columbia University, also played on the pro tour this fall and cracked the top 200 in the ATP singles rankings like Jodar, and was reportedly not planning to play the NCAAs this fall and defend his title. However, he did only decide to play after an early-round loss at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Challenger. On the women’s side, one big name missing is Auburn’s D.J. Bennett, who reached the NCAA singles final the previous fall. Bennett did play the fall college season, but because she slumped in the abbreviated seven-week-or-so fall season that is required for you to qualify for the November NCAAs, she did not qualify for the field. Instead, she played a $15,000 USTA Pro Circuit event in Clemson, South Carolina and won the title.

One person on site at Lake Nona even said that the NCAA champions this year should have an asterisk next to their name in the history books because of the weakened field. The NCAA champion cannot rightfully claim that they are the best player in college tennis for this season, the person said. However, similar to the boycotted Wimbledon in 1973, as years pass, no one will remember who did and didn’t play in the event. If you are the NCAA champion, you will always be remembered as the NCAA champion and you will have it on your resume for life.

The USTA had a tradition of giving a wild card entry into the U.S. Open to the winners of the NCAA championships in singles and doubles, which was then subsequently modified 25 years ago to only be given to American winners of the NCAAs. Because of the NCAAs switch to the fall, a full nine months removed from an forthcoming U.S. Open (and likely because of the likelihood that the best college players would probably skip the fall season – and the fall NCAAs – to play pro events), the USTA opted to rescind its automatic NCAA champion U.S. Open invitation to Americans, which diminishes the prestige of an NCAA singles or doubles event. Instead, the USTA created an “American Collegiate Wild Card Championship” tournament that features invited American collegiate players playing a mini tournament at the USTA National Campus with the winners earning the U.S. Open wild cards.

As college tennis fights to gain more attention among main-steam tennis and sports fans, holding the NCAAs in the fall proves to be a greater struggle to break through the cluttered sports landscape. Most sports fans are more fully-engaged in college football, the National Football League and the start of college basketball. At Lake Nona, I heard that many sports information and communications staffers that usually accompany teams to promote their results to their local collegiate market, failed to attend the event or had to leave early because their colleges needed them and their talents at football and basketball games. Whereas in the spring season, when tennis doesn’t have to compete for attention from football or basketball, tennis gets more full attention. In November, most tennis fans and people in the industry suffer from “tennis fatigue” after the long season so it’s even more difficult to gain the attention of this group with a fall NCAA tennis event.

John Parsons is perhaps the leading media voice for college tennis with his “No Ad, No Problem” podcast and his Twitter/X handle @JTweetsTennis. He and I recorded a conversation during round of 16 singles and doubles day at the 2025 NCAAs on Thursday, November 20^th about this “conundrum” about the fall vs. spring NCAA tennis event that you can listen to here: “Why Are NCAA Tennis Individuals Now Played In The Fall?” https://youtu.be/9ksaC5-w-Jg?si=F2LJhaWEUG0Nos5H via @YouTube

One of the most recognizable names in college tennis is Reese Brantmeier of the University of North Carolina and I had a chat with her while on site at the NCAAs about the fall vs. spring NCAA individual championships and she offered interesting perspectives from a player’s point of view. Brantmeier was a key member of North Carolina’s 2023 NCAA championship team and was a favorite in the individual championships held immediately after the team event that year. She is more of a fan of separating the individual and team championships in a fall season and a spring season.

“I love that the fall is very individual focused so that the spring can be purely team,” she said. “Because I think that helps people really embrace that team aspect and not caring so much about the individuality of it. Because I think with the tournament tagged on the end of the spring, there’s always that kind of voice in the back of your head of like, ‘Oh, I need to have my personal ranking. I need to qualify for the individual tournament.’ And I just really like it being all about the team.”

“So I do like that it’s separate in the fall,” she continued. “I think that this is still in its trial period, so I think there are definitely some kinks with the logistics of it to work out with the system of qualifying.”

After Brantmeier and her North Carolina teammates won the NCAA team title in 2023, Brantmeier was not able to turn around immediately and properly compete as one of the favorites in the singles event, losing in the first round.

“That was super challenging for me, and I was a freshman. I did not handle it very well,” she said. “I came off the probably biggest high I’ve ever had in the sport, and that was my goal the whole team season was working towards that. We got that goal and then I was so excited, and then you got to turn around and play first round. So it was really challenging.”

“And also physically at that point,” she continued. “You’ve played a full season, you’ve played back to back team matches that are obviously the most competitive matches you’re getting all year, and then turning around and having to play a first round was very challenging. As a high seed, I lost first round. So, obviously, from my experience, I would definitely advocate for getting that opportunity to focus on it in the fall.”

Brantmeier, however, was not alone in being a top NCAA seed to lose early in the individual event just after the team event, as NCAA tennis history has documented. I wrote a possible solution to this “exhaustion” problem of the singles and doubles event being staged immediately after the conclusion of the team event here: “Here’s A Better NCAA Tennis Schedule – And How About A Tennis Final Four?” https://worldtennismagazine.com/heres-a-better-ncaa-tennis-schedule-and-how-about-a-tennis-final-four/21989 However, these upsets are not exclusively to blame from exhaustion or let-downs from the team event as in these 2025 championships at Lake Nona, the No. 1 women’s seed and overwhelming favorite, Valerie Glozman of Stanford, lost in the first round of the event and the No. 1 men’s seed, Jay Friend of Arizona, lost in the second round. The No. 2 men’s seed, Duncan Chan of Texas Christian, lost in the first round and No. 3 men’s seed, Aidan Kim of Ohio State, lost in the second round. The 2025 singles event for men and women has been riddled with other big upsets.

Brantmeier, however, acknowledged that more attention is focused on college tennis in the spring.

“Obviously, they do such a great job of promoting the team event and it kind of builds that anticipation the whole team season,” Brantmeier. “So I totally get everyone is in that tennis mindset in May. So it makes sense that it was there initially. But, I’m curious to see where they go from here, because I can see both sides of it.”