Hokie ClubTULSA, Okla. -- Three members of the Virginia Tech men’s tennis team will travel this week to Tulsa, Okla. to participate in the D’Novo All-American Men’s Tennis Championships. Tennis’ top collegiate players are participating in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s (ITA) first national event of the 2008-09 tennis season.
Brandon Corace (Sr, Naples, Fla.) and Sebastien Jacques (So., Magog, Quebec, Canada) will participate in prequalifying, Oct. 1-3, while No. 75 Nicolas Delgado de Robles (Sr., Madrid, Spain) will see his first action in the qualifying round on Oct. 6-8. Corace will face Andrew Landwerlen (Denver) in his first match, Friday at 10:30 a.m. while Jacques battles Adham El-effendi (SMU) at 9:30 a.m. The second and third prequalifying rounds will take place on Saturday. All three players will be looking to advance into the Main Draw, Oct. 9-12. The event will be played at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center.
Many of the events’ top seeds are also featured in the ITA preseason singles and doubles rankings. Among those featured in this year’s men’s singles field is No. 1 ranked Oleksandr Nedovyesov of Oklahoma State. The field also includes several ranked ITA men’s singles including: Denes Lukacs of Baylor (2), Daniel Vallverdu of Miami (3), Alex Clayton of Stanford (4), Robert Farah of USC (5), Arnau Brugues of Tulsa (6), Dimitar Kutrovsky of Texas (7), Justin Kronauge (8) and Bryan Koniecko of Ohio State (9) and J.P. Smith of Tennessee (10).
The tournament includes six rounds of prequalifying and qualifying tournaments with the prequalifying matches beginning on Oct. 3 in Tulsa, Okla. followed by the qualifying rounds Oct. 6-8. The main draw begins on Oct. 9 with competition wrapping up on Sunday, Oct. 12.
Past men’s 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.
The other national title opportunities this season are the ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships hosted by the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in November and the season-ending NCAA Championships in May.