New USA Career-High Rankings, Jan. 19, 2015

Each week I will bring you a list of USAmerican players who have reached a new career-high ranking (CHR). This list covers all players in the Top 1000. Any player outside the Top 1000 will not be included unless they actually have earned at least one point from their previous career-high ranking. See all the CHR-related posts.

New WTA career-high rankings, January 19, 2015

Player name	New CHR	Last wk *= previous   CHR	+  from last week	Pvs CHR If prior to last wk	Date achieved If prior to last wk
Madison Brengle	64	84*	+20
Taylor Townsend	99	100*	+1

It's quite incredible, really. For weeks, even during the off-season, there were far more women than men making these charts. But now, those lower-ranked women who didn't play all either stayed the same or moved down a spot or two.

Townsend got a win in qualifying against Carina Witthoeft (who just yesterday beat Carla Suarez Navarro at the Australian Open) to move up a spot.

And then there's Madison Brengle. It's really been an incredible few months for the 24-year-old Delawarian. She recorded her first Grand Slam main draw victory, cracked the Top 100, made her first WTA quarterfinal, and then last week her first WTA semifinal AND final - as a qualifier! She had three top-50 wins (over Barthel, Knapp, and Nara) and is now 11-2 on the year, with 278 points. We're in uncharted territory for her, and her immediate future will be subject to the whims of WTA draws (she drew Petkovic first round at the Australian Open). But if she can manage a couple of quarterfinals between now and the French Open, she has a real shot at the Top 50. Hard not to be happy for her.

New ATP career-high rankings, January 19, 2015

Player name	New CHR	Last wk *= pvs CHR	+  from last wk	Pvs CHR If prior to last wk	Date achieved If prior to last wk
Jared Donaldson	251	252*	+1
Mitchell Krueger	321	361	+40	330	6/23/2014
Peter Kobelt	540	548	+8	543	12/8/2014
Deiton Baughman	747	799	+52	794	11/17/2014
Taylor Harry Fritz	912	1148	+236	1127	11/10/2014
Thai-Son Kwiatkowski	1006	1036	+30	1025	10/20/2014
Nathan Ponwith	1261	1622	+361	1598	7/28/2014
Clay Thompson	1353	1477	+124	1476	12/22/2014
Aron Hiltzik	1436	1572	+136	1554	11/17/2014
Eric Johnson	1556	1725	+169	1702	10/27/2014

Well isn't this a fine turn of the screw - for the first time in LITERALLY AGES the men have a longer list than the women. And what a list it is! Five triple-digit jumpers, including a Top 1000 debut, and three more jumps of at least 30 spots. Besides Donaldson's rise (due to another's drop, as JD was in Australian Open qualifying this past week), all of the guys on this list came to their new exalted heights thanks to Futures tournaments from a week ago. Here's how it happened:

USA F1 in Plantation, FL: Baughman was the last American standing in this $10K event, with a solid run to the semis in which he didn't drop a set (unlike this past week **FORESHADOWING**). College kids Kwiatkowski and Hiltzik both won a round but lost their second round matches in three sets.

USA F2 in Los Angeles, CA: This fantastic $15K at the USC campus had nearly all the matches livestreamed, so the world got to see The Future Of American Tennis as Fritz and Stefan Kozlov battled it out in the quarters. Fritz won that 6-4 6-4 and looked well on his way to the final, up 6-1 and a break in the second, but Jason Jung had other ideas and ended up winning 1-6 7-6(7) 6-4. Still, this new member of the 1000 Club should be proud of his week, starting with his three-set takedown of #1 seed Dennis Novikov.

Krueger - perhaps spurred on by a certain tweet - was impressive all week and defeated Jung in the final (played the same day as their semis) to end a six-final losing streak. Meanwhile, qualifier Ponwith's 0-6 6-4 6-0 first round win over #2 seed Daniel Nguyen was the stuff of legend. Thompson (Q) and Johnson (WC) each earned a win.

Finally, in GER F1, Kobelt reached the quarterfinals, and gained 2 points, to inch up 8 spots.

(Final note: Apologies to Donaldson and Bjorn Fratangelo for initially leaving them off last week's CHR list. That oversight has since been corrected.)