Meyer Wins in Opening Round of ITA All-American Championships
October 03, 2003 | Men's Tennis
The Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships is not only the largest single tournament of this season in collegiate tennis, with over 300 competitors, but also the first of three national championship events at the Division I level during the 2003-04 collegiate tennis season.
Meyer and freshman Mark Gellard are representing ECU in the men's open singles draw.
Meyer won his opening-round match against Chattanooga's Diego Fernandez, 6-2, 6-1.
Later in the day, he bowed out in a tough-fought match against Louisville's regionally ranked singles player and the tournament's 18th seed, Octavian Nicodim, by a score of 2-6, 7-5, 6-4.
Gellard did not fare as well on Friday as he lost to Purdue's Paul Rose, 6-0, 6-4, in the opening round.
Meyer and Gellard will pair up in double competition on Saturday when they take on Middle Tennessee's Kirk Jackson and Trevor Short at 12:30 p.m. The winner of that match will advance to play Rohan Gajjar and Imran Ismail from the University of Arkansas at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday in the round of 64.
The Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships include 256 singles players and 128 doubles teams in prequalifying tournaments played October 3-6 which feed into 64-player and 32-doubles team qualifying tournaments October 7-8. The 64-player, 32-doubles team main draw takes place Oct. 9-12. The singles tournament fields can run over 300 players, making it the largest collegiate event of the season. A player who begins in prequalifying must win seven matches just to reach the main draw. UCLA's Vince Allegre did just that in 1997, then went on to win five more to reach the final.
This event has been played annually since 1979. A number of its past participants have enjoyed successful professional tennis careers, including Todd Martin (Northwestern), MaliVai Washington (Michigan) and Sargis Sargsian (Arizona State), and current U.S. Davis Cup team members James Blake (Harvard), Bob and Mike Bryan (Stanford), and Brian Vahaly (Virginia). Bob Bryan won the '97 singles title, Blake the '98 singles and doubles titles and Vahaly reached the '99 singles final and '00 doubles final.
Middle Tennessee's Daniel Klemetz beat Illinois' Amer Delic in last year's singles final at the Champions Club. Delic would eventually win the NCAA singles title (and played in this year's U.S. Open). Delic and Michael Calkins won the doubles title.
