I was just going to post on this-his live ranking is now 103. He had not won a MD Slam match before this US Open although he had played in qualis of 4 other slams and made it into the 1st rd of this year's French Open. What do you think separates Diallo from the rest of the post collegians in ATP 400-his height (6'8), the support of the Canadian tennis association (he played Davis Cup and is now #3 ranked in Canada right on Shap's tail), tough competition playing line 2 in the SEC? He was around 450 last summer one year after his last KY dual match, and now an additional year later he is close to breaking into the top 100. It helps as one of the top Canadians, that he can get WCs into either the Qualis or MD of the Canadian Masters as well as multiple challengers.
The Canadians have made good use of the US college system-with the exception of Felix and Shap, all the players in top 1000 from Canada 29 and under all play/played college tennis-Diallo, Galarneau, Draxl, Boulais, Baadi, Tudorica (USF), Ben George (WMU), Juan Carlos Aguilar (Texas A&M). I am not complaining; my son had the opportunity to play two of the above-one he beat in a Future and another was an unfinished close dual match. To all those who protest international players in college, the glass half full thinking is American players (even MM guys like my son) can have the opportunity to play rising international stars without getting a passport and the expense of leaving the US. I think Canadian and British players have benefited most recently from college system. In other European countries like Italy, Spain, and France, there is enough tennis infrastructure, more junior ITFs, club players, etc that players in their 20s have competitive opportunities to prepare them for Tour outside of college. As an interesting note, Diallo's career high in jr ITFs was only 581. Jr ITF ranking is only a so so predictor of either college or pro success. From my state, we had a jr ITF player ranked in top 10 in the world, was expected to be a star but just played just OK for a SEC team, and then struggled on the pro circuit. Ben Shelton's jr ITF high was only 306. A lot of talented players play few if any jr iTFs (expensive travel) and the top 15-17yos start playing Futures instead of jr ITFs.
What are common factors for college players who break or come close to breaking into the top 100 within 2 years of college tennis? NCAA finalist/winner, Kzoo finalist/winner enables some-others never break top 100. Height helps. It can help to have a parent who was a pro, e.g Shelton but other sons of former pros may not pursue pro careers, e.g. son of Wayne Ferreira (former ATP #6 and former Tiafoe coach) ended up mid lineup for one of the weaker SEC teams and only played a few Future Qualis.
Has anyone seen an analysis which determines at what ATP ranking an American player should preempt or leave college to turn pro? As expensive as the Tour is, former collegians have a home base at the college where they can probably drop in for free training, coaching, WCs, and of course former teammates as practice hitting partners between tourneys...
One other interesting point-there are 29 former collegians in top 200-four of those didnt even attend P5 colleges-Koepfer of Tulane, Nicolas Moreno De Alboran of UC-Santa Barbara, Holmgren of San Diego, and Murkel Dellien of Wichita State (the last one would be a good college tennis to pro trivia question). Ask your college tennis fans outside this board to see if they can name these 4-they will be doing good to get two right LOL.
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