By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
The NCAA Tennis Championships are being held once again at its spiritual and historic home, the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, but there is something missing.
For a second straight year, it is only featuring the team championship. There are no singles and doubles championships to follow.
The NCAA just finished a two-year test program to hold the NCAA singles and doubles championships in November, before the team season begins and recently announced that this change will become permanent. The change was not met with a lot of enthusiasm from fans and former NCAA champions, despite the NCAA saying that 75 percent of college coaches approved of the permanent move. The NCAA stated in a press release for their reasoning, “Part of the original rationale for the decision to hold the singles and doubles championships in the fall involved student-athlete well-being.”
Stevie Johnson, who won two NCAA singles title and four NCAA team titles for the University of Southern California, would certainly be someone whose opinion carries a lot of weight, was shocked at the decision, posting on X, “Wow, This is insane that the NCAA individuals are in the fall. Absolute disserve to the players to have two different seasons for NCAA titles. I’m shocked that they have chosen this route.” Johnson, of course, went on to have a top 25 ATP singles ranking, an Olympic medal and being a member of the U.S. Davis Cup team.
Thai-son Kwiatkowski, the 2017 NCAA singles champion from the University of Virginia, commenting on the Instagram page for the college tennis media outlet “No Ad, No Problem” wrote of the decision, “Just terrible. Tennis is a spring sport. NCAAs are in May. Can’t crown a champion before the season even starts.”
The NCAA press announcement further explained their reasoning for the decision stating, “Under the previous format, student-athletes only in the singles and doubles championships could wait up to three weeks from the end of the regular season until they competed again. In addition, tennis student-athletes in both the team and individual championships could compete for nine of 10 days. With so many matches in a short span, some student-athletes withdrew after selections and during the championships due to injury. Some student-athletes also withdrew directly after selections or after losing in the team tournament.”
This statement is interesting because it contradicts itself in a matter of two sentences, saying players have too much down time (up to three weeks) but then there is too much tennis for players during the NCAAs. A three-week rest period for professional players is actually not uncommon and actually preferred in some cases.
Lisa Raymond is also one of the great success stories of top college tennis players, translating her two NCAA singles titles in 1992 and 1993 into a top 20 singles career and 11 major doubles titles and the world No. 1 doubles ranking. In an exchange with me on Instagram, Raymond wrote a rebuttal to player safety reasoning, stating “I have heard one of the arguments was it’s a lot of tennis for the players to go back to back at the end of the season. My thoughts on that are if I have any plans on playing pro tennis and can’t handle playing 2 weeks of tennis matches, then I’m certainly not ready!”
Raymond stated at the start, “My initial thoughts are that I loved having the NCAA singles event in the spring, after the team competition. For me it felt like there was such momentum after the team event, especially the year we won out at Stanford in 92… I was on such a high from that it carried right into the singles event to follow and I loved that. I also feel like having it in the fall, you haven’t played a ton of matches, tournaments yet in the season and again, there isn’t much build up or momentum as there would be playing all year and culminating in the spring.”
At the NCAA individuals in November of 2025 at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, John Parsons of “No Ad, No Problem” spoke with me about the Fall NCAAs and the pros and cons, “Why Are NCAA Tennis Individuals Now Played In The Fall?” which can be seen here https://youtu.be/9ksaC5-w-Jg?si=vOtly9qnd_62WIJp
Debbie Graham of Stanford, the 1990 NCAA singles champion and former top 35 WTA singles and doubles player, is another of the best success stories of college tennis players who transitioned to pro tennis and also expressed her displeasure at the NCAAs decision.
“I really disagree with the decision to move the NCAA women’s tennis individual championships from the spring—right after the team event—to the early fall,” she wrote to me via Facebook messenger. “That change completely shifts the meaning of what those individual titles represent. College tennis has always been built around the team season first, where players grind through dual matches, travel, and the ups and downs of competing for something bigger than themselves. The individual tournament used to feel like a continuation of that journey, rewarding players who had contributed to their team and then earned the chance to compete for personal titles. Now, placing individuals in the fall opens the door for players to focus only on that event, without having to commit to the full team season. It creates a situation where someone can essentially bypass the “grind” that defines college tennis and still compete for a national championship. That undermines the core value of the sport at the collegiate level—team first, individuals second. The old format reinforced that philosophy: you competed for your school all season, then turned around and battled for individual honors with that same competitive edge and momentum. The new structure risks turning the individual championships into a standalone event, detached from the team experience. College tennis shouldn’t become a system where players can pick and choose between individual and team priorities based on convenience or incentives. It should continue to emphasize commitment to the team, with individual success coming as an extension of that effort—not a substitute for it.”
Until the year 2000, the USTA would annually award a U.S. Open wild card to the NCAA singles and doubles champions but then made the decision to only award the wild cards to Americans who won the NCAAs. However, based on the NCAA decision to hold the individual championships in November the last two years, the USTA have even revoked that for American players, instead holding an “American Collegiate Wild Card” tournament at the USTA National Campus at Lake Nona in June to determine the U.S. college player to earn the U.S. Open wild card, which is somewhat of a statement that the NCAAs in November are too far removed from the U.S. Open to properly determine who the best American player is in college tennis that deserves entry into the U.S. Open. So the USTA will be able to at least determine who the best American college players are for an entire college season, while the NCAA champion will now just be, more or less, be a pre-season champion.
