Tournament Central
IRVINE, Calif. – The UC Irvine men's tennis team is back in action this week as it heads to Malibu, Calif., for the 2016 ITA Southwest Regional Championships at Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center, Oct. 20-24.
The tournament, which is hosted by Pepperdine, features 128 singles competitors and 64 doubles pairings from institutions out of Southern California, Hawaii and Arizona. Competition will start Thursday with one round of doubles and two rounds of singles.
Every Anteater will make the trip as UCI has nine singles and five doubles entries. Andrew Gong, Mason Hansen, Luis Lopez, Anil Patel, Vatsal Bajpai, Derek Chen and Moritz Geis are slated to begin singles action tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. Luca Marquard and Bruce Man-Son-Hing both have a first-round bye and will open play in the Round of 64.
UC Irvine's doubles pairings include Bajpai/Chen, Geis/Gong, Hansen/Patel, Man-Son-Hing/Marquard and Sebastian Heim/Lopez.
The singles and doubles champions will earn an automatic berth to the 2016 USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships held at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, Nov. 3-6.
LAST TIME OUT
UC Irvine had nine players compete in the San Diego State Fall Invitational, Oct. 7-9. Freshman Moritz Geis highlighted the weekend by winning three singles matches to advance to the Flight 1 semifinals. Junior Luca Marquard made it to the quarterfinals, while he also teamed up with sophomore Luis Lopez to win the Flight 1 doubles consolation championship.
IN THE RANKINGS
Junior Sebastian Heim came in at No. 79 in the ITA preseason rankings. Earlier this month, Heim opened his first fall tournament with a 1-6, 7-5, 6-4 victory over a ranked Stanford opponent at the ITA All-American Championships. It was his first competitive match since April as he spent the offseason recovering from an injury.
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