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Tennessee's Smith Sweeps D'Novo/ITA All American
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JP Smith and Andrei Daescu (with their coaches). Photos courtesy of ITATennis.com
As a freshman at the University of Tennessee, Aussie John Patrick (JP) Smith made the finals of the NCAA Championship (losing to Somdev Devvarman, as he claimed his second title). A year and a half later, Smith is proving he's got staying power at the top of college tennis.
The D'Novo/ITA All-American Championships began with a landslide of upsets at the University of Tulsa, but things calmed down after the second round. In the end it was the second-seeded JP Smith facing Oklahoma's Andrei Daescu. It was not an easy ride for either, with Daescu playing two three-setters and a total of five tiebreakers. For Smith, there were also two matches going the distance, including one over the third-seeded Robert Farah of the University of Southern California. When it came to the final match, however, the crucial point was the tiebreaker that Andrei Daescu didn't win in the first set, followed by a 6-3 second for JP Smith.
Smith also became the first player since James Blake in 1998 (when he was playing for Harvard) to sweep the All-American Championships when he teamed with fellow Volunteer Boris Conkic for the doubles title. The duo defeated another unseeded team, Oklahoma State's Aleksey Bessonov and Oleksandr Nedovyesov, in the finals, 8-4.
For complete results from the D'Novo/ITA All-American Championships, visit the ITA Website.
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