Brady, Ram named Team USA Players of the Month - February

Both Jennifer Brady and Rajeev Ram went from hard lockdown to hardware at the Australian Open, as Brady reached her first major singles final Down Under and Ram won his second Australian Open mixed doubles title.

The 25-year old Brady was the event’s breakout star, becoming the sixth different American woman to reach a Grand Slam singles final in the last decade and the first female college tennis player to reach a major singles final since Kathy Jordan at the 1983 Australian Open. While she lost in the final to now four-time major champion Naomi Osaka, Brady shot to a new career-high ranking of No. 13.

The 36-year-old Ram, meanwhile, nearly pulled off the Australian Open double, reaching the men’s doubles final in addition to winning the mixed with Barbora Krejcikova. It was the second Australian Open mixed doubles title for the pair in the last three years and Ram’s first title since winning the men’s doubles in Melbourne in 2020.

Other highlights from Americans in February include:

• Twenty-year old Ann Li reached her first WTA singles final at the Grampians Trophy WTA 500 Australian Open warmup event in Melbourne.
• Coco Gauff, who turns 17 on March 13, was the top-performing American in the post-Australian Open WTA event in Adelaide, reaching the semifinals, where former Arizona Sun Devil Desirae Krawczyk won the doubles title.
• Two-time NCAA singles champion Danielle Collins made a run to the singles semifinals at the Phillip Island Trophy WTA 250 in Melbourne, held concurrent to the Australian Open in its second week.
• Former NCAA singles and doubles champion Mackenzie McDonald followed up his run to the fourth round in Melbourne by winning the singles title at a Challenger event in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.
• Former USTA Boys’ 18s national champion Jenson Brooksby won his first Challenger title at the Challenger 80 in Potchefstroom, South Africa.
• Nineteen-year old Brandon Nakashima won his second career Challenger title, at a Challenger 80 in Quimper, France.
• Varvara Lepchenko won her first title since 2018 at a W25 in Boca Raton, Fla., outlasting former Wimbledon girls’ champ Claire Liu. Pan American Games doubles gold medalists Usue Arconada and Caroline Dolehide took the doubles crown there.
• Christian Harrison continued his comeback success by winning the singles title at the second M25 in Naples, Fla., his first since 2017, a week after reaching the singles final in the first.
• Players to win ITF-level doubles titles: former Michigan Wolverine Emina Bektas (W25 in Orlando, Fla.); brothers and former SMU Mustangs Hunter and Yates Johnson (M25 in Naples, Fla.); former UC-Santa Barbara Gaucho Nicolas Moreno de Alboran (M15 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt); former TCU Horned Frog Alex Rybakov (M15 in Antalya, Turkey).