Sept. 23, 2010
WACO, Texas - The Baylor men's tennis team will play in its second fall event when it hosts the 10th-annual HEB Baylor Men's Invitational, Fri.-Sun., Sept. 24-26, at the Baylor Tennis Center.
This year's tournament consists of 16 schools with over 90 student-athletes participating. The field includes seven players currently ranked in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's (ITA) national pre-season rankings including five of the top 30. In addition to an impressive singles draw, six of the competing doubles teams are ranked in the ITA's national pre-season poll.
"We have a lot of great players and a lot of great programs coming here and so we get to play a lot of great tennis this weekend," head coach Matt Knoll said. "Again, we are just trying to get matches at this time of the year. We just want to get out and work on the stuff we have been doing in practice."
Seven Baylor players will represent the university in the tournament including seniors John Peers, who is ranked No. 28 in the ITA poll, and Sergio Ramirez. The rest of the Baylor contingent includes juniors Julian Bley, Kike Grangeiro and Chris Gordon and sophomore Roberto Maytin and freshman Robert Verzaal. Peers will the No. 5 overall seed in the singles A draw, while he will partner with Roberto Maytin to be the sixth-seeded doubles duo at the event.
"I think everyone will build on what they did last weekend," Knoll said. "We have some guys that are looking like they are going to step forward and then on the other side, I think we have some guys that felt like they didn't play as well as they could have and they are excited about getting out and having a go this weekend."
The tournament will consist of a 64-player singles A draw and a 32-player singles B draw, as well as a 32-team doubles A draw and a 16-team doubles B draw. There will be consolation matches for flight A and B singles.
The tournament will kick-off with doubles play beginning at 8 a.m. on Friday morning and continue until a champion is crowned on Sunday. In last year's tournament Baylor's Jordan Rux took home the singles title and then partnered with former Bear Maros Horny to win the doubles draw as well.
Rux did not lose a single set in his six tournament matches en route to earning a Baylor player's sixth title in the Invitational's ninth year. It was the fourth time in nine years a Baylor tandem had captured the Baylor Invitational doubles title.
Auburn's Tim Puetz is the tournament's highest ranked player in the ITA rankings at No. 11 followed by Texas Tech's Raony Carvalho at No. 16 and Texas A&M's Jeff Dadamo at No. 22. Top-ranked doubles tandems include No. 5 Tim Puetz and Alex Stamchev (Auburn), No. 23 Emanuel Brighiu and Chris Price (TCU) and No. 27 Gonzalo Escobar and Raony Carvalho (Texas Tech).
Teams participating include: Air Force, Auburn, Baylor, Idaho, Maryland, New Mexico State, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Rice, TCU, Texas A&M, Texas A&M-CC, Texas Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, UT-Arlington, and UT-Pan American.
For complete draws and updated results visit the tournament's web site.
