Jan. 15, 2015 COMPLETE DRAW WACO, Texas - The sixth-ranked Baylor men's tennis team will open its 2015 collegiate season at the Sherwood Collegiate Cup Friday through Monday in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Baylor is playing in the event at the Sherwood Country Club for the sixth consecutive year and has placed seven players and three doubles teams in the 32-man singles and 16-pairing doubles draws, including the No. 2 overall seed Julian Lenz.
This year's field includes three other perennial powerhouse collegiate tennis programs with representatives from USC, UCLA and Stanford, who are ranked in the preseason polls at No. 1, 4 and 30 respectively.
"The Sherwood Collegiate Cup is such a good tournament," head coach Matt Knoll said. "The competition is just so good. Everyone there is good and there aren't any easy matches. It is going to be a great event for us."
The seven Baylor players are slated to begin their tournament run on Friday morning, highlighted by second-seeded and fifth-ranked Lenz battling Anthony Tsodikov of Stanford.
Senior Mate Zsiga, who will be making his return to collegiate action after taking the fall semester off, battles sixth-seeded and 58th-ranked Nick Crystal of USC. Senior Diego Galeano will play Dennis Mkrtchian of UCLA.
Sophomore Vince Schneider and junior Felipe Rios begin their season's against fourth-seeded and No. 8 Jonny Wang (USC) and Eric Johnson (USC), respectively.
Playing in their first matches for Baylor, Max Tchoutakian faces UCLA's No. 90 Austin Rapp and Juan Benitez draws the event's No.8 seed and the country's 75th-ranked player in David Hsu (Stanford).
Second round action in the singles draw is also scheduled to be played Friday afternoon with the first matches set to begin at 1:30 p.m.
Doubles competition will begin on Saturday morning with all matches set to begin at 12:15 p.m. CT. Baylor will have three teams competing in the doubles draw beginning with Baylor's Benitz and Zsiga who will face Stanford's Yale Goldberg and David Wilczynski. Meanwhile, Galeano and Schneider will pair together to face Stanford's Robert Stineman and John Morrissey. BU's final pairing, Rios and Lenz, are seeded third in the draw and face Nick Crystal and Thibault Forget of USC.
Following this weekend's tournament, the Bears will return to Waco to begin their 2015 dual-match season. Baylor starts the season on Wednesday, Jan. 21, by hosting Illinois at 2 p.m. at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center. The Bears will then host No. 62 Tulane on Saturday, Jan. 24, at noon as part of the ITA Kickoff Weekend.
For more information on the Baylor men's tennis team, follow the team's official twitter account: @BaylorMTennis.
