SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Ending the fall season on top of the college tennis landscape, freshman Nishesh Basavareddy won the ITA National Fall Championship in singles on Sunday afternoon. He ends his fall slate with a 17-1 overall record, and will be the nation's newest No. 1 ranked singles player.
Basavareddy is the fourth Stanford player to earn the title, with no other program besting Stanford's four champions. He brings the title back to the Farm for the first time in 21 years, joining past winners Dan Goldie (1985), Jeff Salzenstein (1996) and Alex Kim (2001). He gave the Cardinal a national finalist for the second year in a row, as Arthur Fery was the runner-up in 2021. Additionally, he is the first freshman to win the tournament since 2011 (Mitchell Frank, Virginia).
The freshman from Indiana opened the event with straight set wins over Oklahoma's Nathan Han and Baylor's Jake Finn Bass before outlasting Michigan's Andrew Fenty in the quarterfinal,4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Basavareddy won a second three-setter in the semifinals, 6-2, 1-6, 6-2, over Florida State's Antoine Cornut-Chauvinc to reach the final, where he downed Texas' Elliot Spizzirri 6-1, 6-4.
Basavareddy wasn't the only Stanford player in the event, as Max Basing picked up an opening round win over Mississippi State's Nemanja Malesevic, 6-4, 7-5. Stanford was the only school with multiple singles players in the round of 16. Basing fell to the tournament's top seed in the round of 16 in three sets.