BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s tennis team will be hosting the LSU Showcase this weekend with play set to begin Friday morning at W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium.
The 2001 LSU Showcase will begin play at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and will continue playing through the championship on Sunday. The event will include top players from UL-Lafayette, LSU, New Orleans, South Florida, and Tulane.
The event will feature a Showcase Draw for both singles and doubles, as well as a Round Robin singles draw.
Four players from LSU will be competing in the Round Robin Draw set to begin at 10:30 a.m. Friday morning. The four players competing for the Tigers will be seniors Dan Kiernan and Jesse Smatt, sophomore Bryan Fisher, and freshman Jason Hazley.
Kiernan, who comes into the match with a No. 29 ranking, will face 98th-ranked Jason Pieters from UL-Lafayette, while No. 72 Smatt will challenge 52nd-ranked Paco Antelo of South Florida. Fisher will take on the No. 100 ranked player, Martin Wetzel, of South Florida, while Hazley faces Jakub Ilowski, of UL-Lafayette.
Round two of Round Robin play will begin at 1:30 p.m. with Kiernan facing Ilowski and Smatt playing Naser. Fisher will then take on Antelo and Hazley will play Wetzel. Saturday’s schedule will not be determined until after Friday’s action. Match times for Saturday are 9 a.m and 1 p.m.. Sunday’s matches are set for 9 a.m.
There will also be three Tigers competing in the Showcase Draw in singles, while a set of three teams will compete for LSU in the Doubles Draw as well.
Competing in the Showcase Draw in singles will be junior Brandon Nicholson, sophomore Sanjin Sadovich, and freshman Peter Richman. Nicholson, Sadovich, and Richamn all have first-round byes, therefore their first match won’t begin until Noon.
Nicholson is set to take on the winner of the Arty Ishii (Tulane) vs. Eric Gildhorn (South Florida) morning match. Nicholson will face Johan Vanderwesthuizen of UL-Lafayette, who also has a first-round bye, while Sadovich will await the Tarchowski (UL-Lafayette) vs Adrian Meier (South Florida) winner.
Doubles action will begin at 4 p.m.