Florida’s Claire Bartlett (Chattanooga, Tenn.), Alex Cercone (Seminole, Fla.), Caroline Hitimana (Waterloo, Belgium), Joanna Mather (Duluth, Ga.) and Sofie Oyen (Leopoldsburg, Belgium) begin play at the 2010 Riviera/ITA Women’s Tennis All American Championships on Saturday morning at the Los Angeles Tennis Center.
Eight athletes will advance to the qualifying singles portion of the week-long tournament, which is the first national singles and doubles event of the season. The Riviera/ITA Women’s Tennis All American Championships also is considered the first leg of the collegiate Grand Slam.
“We’ve been practicing for three weeks now and we’ve made significant strides,” UF head coach Roland Thornqvist said. “Our singles play is much more refined and our doubles play is significantly improved since our last tournament (Sept. 10-12). This tournament is one of the more difficult events of the year because most of the best players in the country are there and a lot of our players will have to many, many matches through prequalifying and qualifying to hopefully get to the main draw. It’s going to be a great test, not only talent wise, but also for our durability.”
Qualifying and main draw matches will be played at the Riviera Tennis Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where qualifying action is scheduled for Oct. 5-6, with the main draw held from Oct. 7-10.
Mather is ranked No. 98 and takes on Utah’s Evgenia Kryuchkova in the opening round. The winner of that match plays the winner of the match between fourth-seeded and 84th-ranked Jelena Durisic from North Carolina and No. 122 Whitney Wolf from LSU. The Gator junior is 43-17 in her career, including a 2-1 record this year with all matches against ranked opponents.
Bartlett, a junior, drew Maryland’s Ana Belzunce in the first round, with the winner playing either second-seeded and 79th-ranked Kayla Duncan from Wake Forest or Lucia Batta from UNLV. Bartlett is 41-19 on the singles court during her career, including a 2-1 record this year.
Cercone (pronounced sir-CONE), who is competing in the second tournament of her young collegiate career, will play Harvard’s No. 114-ranked Hideko Tachibana in the first round. Is the second consecutive match the Gator rookie will play against a ranked singles foe.
Oyen is making her collegiate debut this weekend and meets Louisiana-Monroe’s 101st-ranked Claire Clark Saturday morning. The Gator newcomer is listed as the No. 2-ranked freshman in the ITA’s national preseason chart. Oyen (pronounced OY-yen) is the 2010 Under 18 top-ranked player in Belgium and recently earned a career-high WTA Tour singles ranking of 403 in the world on Aug. 23, 2010, and a career-best doubles ranking of 537 on April 12, 2010.
Cercone and Gator sophomore Caroline Hitimana (Waterloo, Belgium) pair in the 32-team doubles draw and aim to win three matches during the two-day event to earn one of four open places in the qualifying draw. The Gator duo meet UCLA’s Johansson and Seguco in the first round.
Hitimana, ranked No. 77 nationally, moved up in the draw and begins action in the qualifying round.
UF sophomore Allie Will (Boca Raton, Fla.), currently ranked a career-high No. 5, earned an automatic spot in the singles and doubles main draw, pairing with Oyen in the 16-team doubles event. Sophomore Lauren Embree (Marco Island, Fla.) joins Mather in the main draw for doubles and will not play singles at the tournament this year.
Live scoring updates on all rounds of the tournament will be provided on www.itatennis.com.
