Oct. 2, 2002

WACO, Texas - Nine Baylor men's tennis players will participate in the 2002 Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships. The men's ITA championships is hosted at the Champions Club in Chattanooga, Tennessee with over 300 players competing, making it the largest collegiate event of the season.

The top 16 singles seeds and top eight doubles seeds have been named for the tournament dubbed the "toughest hardcourt events of the fall collegiate season," and are these players are ranked among the top 19 in the nation.

Qualifying for the main draw are seniors Zoltan Papp and sophomore Benjamin Becker, Participating in the qualifying round is junior Matias Marin and playing in the prequalifying singles are senior Mike Garcia and Baylor's four new additions to the team, transfer Benedikt Dorsch and freshmen Jason Gould, Barry McLaren, and Ivor Lovrak.

Baylor's own, Benjamin Becker, ranked No. 5 in the nation, has been seeded third. Ahead of Becker are Kentucky's Jesse Witten and UCLA's Tobias Clemens who have been ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation.

Listed below are the top 10 seeds for the Oct. 10-13 main draw (prequalifying and qualifying take place Oct. 4-9); current Omni Hotels national ranking in parenthesis:

Singles 1. Jesse Witten, Kentucky (1) 2. Tobias Clemens, UCLA (2) 3. Benjamin Becker, Baylor (5) 4. Amer Delic, Illinois (6) 5. Phillip King, Duke (7) 6. Oliver Maiberger, San Diego State (8) 7. Bobby Reynolds, Vanderbilt (9) 8. Daniel Klemetz, Middle Tennessee (10) 9. David Martin, Stanford (11) 10. Marcin Matkowski, UCLA (12)