KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Seven LSU men’s tennis players are set to begin play in the Omni Hotels Region III Championships on Thursday at the Varsity Courts on the campus of the University of Tennessee.
Competing for the Tigers in the four-day event will be 29th-ranked Dan Kiernan, 72nd-ranked Jesse Smatt, sophomore’s Sebastian Rutka, Sanjin Sadovich and Brian Fisher, as well as highly-touted freshmen Jason Hazley and Peter Richman.
“This is definitely the toughest region in the nation,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “It consists of a lot of Southeastern Conference teams and the SEC is the strongest conference in the country. This is another great opportunity for our players to compete against some good competition and hopefully they will grow from this experience.”
The Region III Championship tournament is comprised of the top players from across the Southeastern United States and will include members of Georgia’s 2001 national championship team, NCAA runner-up Tennessee, Miami (Fla.) and Tulane. 10 of the 12 Southeastern Conference teams are located in Region III and will feature players in the event.
The competitors will participate in a 96-player singles draw and battle in a 48-team doubles event. The singles competition will include 11 of the top-20 players in the nation and Mattias Boeker, the top-ranked men’s tennis player, will be the No. 1 seed.
“I think that a lot of our guys have chances to do well in this tournament and I keep telling them that it is all about attitude,” Brown said. “The guys who will come out this week and have a positive attitude will advance farther than those with bad attitudes, and that means playing with the same intensity no matter if it’s indoor, outdoor, cold or windy.”
Three Tigers received first-round byes in the singles draw of the tournament. Kiernan earned a bye and is the sixth-seeded player in the competition. Smatt, LSU’s senior from Cooper City, Fla., is the 12th seed, while Rutka comes in as the 30th-seeded player in the event.
LSU’s Richman will face Memphis’ Lee Taylor in first-round action and Fisher will face Florida A&M’s Isaac Yarrell. Sadovich is scheduled to play Catalin Bradu of Central Florida and Hazley will take on Georgia State’s Mattias Ormeza.
In this weekend’s doubles competition, the Tigers’ fifth-ranked combination of Kiernan/Rutka will go up against some of the nation’s elite doubles teams. The Region III doubles tournament will feature four of the country’s top-10 doubles pairs. The draw for the doubles event is scheduled to be released Thursday evening.
The LSU men’s tennis players will begin their quest for a Region III Championship title on Thursday at 8 a.m. here in Knoxville, Tenn.