Sept. 30, 2004
Champaign, Ill. -
Five members of the Fighting Illini men's tennis team will travel to Chattanooga, Tenn. to compete in the ITA All-American Tournament starting this Saturday, Oct. 2. This will be the first tournament for the Illini since they competed in the Napa Valley Invitational two weeks ago.
"The All-American is more of an individual event, so this will be our first individual competition of the season," said head coach Craig Tiley. "We have five players in this tournament, which is a lot. It's great to have this many guys in the tournament; we actually had more, but we had to pull a few out so they wouldn't miss more school."
Senior Chris Martin, who is No. 50 in the ITA rankings, will be the only Illini to make the singles main draw without qualifying.
"It's great that Chris doesn't have to play those two tough matches to get into the main draw now," Tiley said. "A player pulled out and Chris happened to be the first alternate high enough to get in."
Last year the Illini were unable to bring everybody aboard when they traveled to Tennessee, but still managed to come away with some encouraging performances. This year the same type of sentiment is going around and the Illini are again looking to make early strides to put themselves in position for the prize result in the spring.
"We have been practicing pretty hard this week and really ever since we got back from California," Tiley said. "Everything hasn't been as normal as it usually is this time of year, but we've gotten through it and now we are looking forward to this next week."
The Illini are hoping to contend in singles with No. 50 Martin in the main draw that starts on Thursday, Oct. 7. They also know that No. 68 Pramod Dabir, No. 95 Ryler DeHeart, No. 111 GD Jones and No. 121 Monte Tucker have the ability to make some noise when they start qualifying rounds on Monday, Oct. 4.
As for doubles, the 52nd ranked duo of Dabir and Martin have to go through qualifying this weekend, while Jones and DeHeart, who are 17th, open action in the main draw starting on Thursday.
Qualifying starts this weekend and goes through Wednesday. The main draw for both singles and doubles starts Thursday, Oct. 7 and carries through the weekend with the championship matches being held Sunday, Oct. 10.
