Oct. 4, 2009
LOS ANGELES - Texas A&M's doubles team of Morgan Frank and Elzé Potgieter notched a pair of victories today to advance to the 32-team qualifying bracket at the Women's Riviera/ITA All-American Championships on the UCLA campus.
The Aggie tandem opened today's action with an 8-5 victory over Courtney McLane and Alexa Guarachi of Alabama and then defeated Courtney Byron and Stephanie Hammel of UC Irvine by the identical 8-5 score to advance.
"I was very impressed with Elzé and Morgan today," A&M coach Bobby Kleinecke said. "They made some very, very good adjustments, especially in the second match, which gave them an opportunity to have a chance to win the match. They pretty much just out-grinded the other team and wore them down by getting ball after ball back. They were focused and handled the pressure to qualify, and I was impressed with their play."
The Aggie duo will face Berkeley Brock and Lenka Hojckova of North Carolina State in the qualifier first round on Tuesday at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Potgieter also opens singles play in the qualifier on Tuesday and is slated to face No. 4 seed Mari Andersson of California.
A&M's other doubles team of Stephanie Davidson and Nazari Urbina didn't fare as well, falling to Megan Alexander and Maria Bebanova of TCU, 8-2, in the prequalifier second round.
"Nazari and Stephanie just ran into a better team today," Kleinecke said. "They played extremely well today, and there wasn't much we could do about it. We just have to go back and get ready for the next tournament."