Oct. 2, 2008
COLLEGE STATION, Texas - The Texas A&M men's tennis team continues fall tournament play at the D'Novo/ITA All-American Championships to be held over a two-week period from Oct. 3-12 at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center in Tulsa, Okla.
The nation's top collegiate players will be on hand for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's first national event of the 2008-09 season. Many of the events' top seeds are also featured in the ITA preseason singles and doubles rankings including the No. 4-ranked doubles combination of A&M All-Americans Conor Pollock (San Antonio, Texas) and Austin Krajicek (Brandon, Fla.) who will participate in the doubles main draw on Thursday, Oct. 9. Pollock, a senior ranked No. 17 nationally in singles, will also compete in the singles main draw next week.
"This is the toughest tournament of the fall as the best players in the country compete in it," said third-year Texas A&M head coach Steve Denton. "I was encouraged by our practices this week. Our intensity was high and we had spirited competition. Our guys really spent some valuable time working on their game since playing in Waco (at the HEB Baylor Intercollegiate). We are quite further along in terms of our preparation for the tournament, then we were last year."
Five Aggies get set for action in the pre-qualifying draw of singles on Friday including ninth-seeded Chris Chirico (Philadelphia, Pa.), junior Marcus Lunt (San Antonio, Texas), sophomore Patrick Dean (Dallas, Texas), freshman Austin Klores (Franklin, Texas) and freshman Colin Hoover (Victoria, Texas).
Krajicek, a sophomore who was named co-Big 12 Freshman and co-Big 12 Newcomer of the Year a year ago, will compete in the qualifying draw of singles on Monday, Oct. 6, along with sophomore Wil Spencer (Ponce de Leon, Fla.). Both are ranked No. 97 and No. 102 respectively.
"Our players are going to continue to get better," Denton said. "You can tell when guys are going to have a breakthrough by seeing their efforts in practice. Plus, our returners have previous tournament experience at the ITA All-American and are acclimated to the court conditions at Tulsa. Both of those things combined translate into playing well. I am really pleased with their progress so far and our overall team chemistry still remains."
Past men's ITA All-American participants include current professional stars such as recent U.S. Open quarterfinalist James Blake (in 1998 as a sophomore at Harvard) and Bob and Mike Bryan (in 1997 as sophomores at Stanford), the world's top-ranked doubles team.