BATON ROUGE — Three LSU men’s tennis players earned automatic bids to the 2003 Icy Hot/ITA Men’s All-American Championships. Peter Richman and the doubles team of Jason Hazley and Bryan Fisher will bypass the pre-qualifying and qualifying rounds of the tournament, which begins Oct. 3 in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Richman was ranked No. 36 in ITA’s preseason poll of Division I singles players. Hazley and Fisher were the seventh-ranked doubles team.
“This is one of the biggest college tournaments outside the NCAA Championships,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “It’s going to be a great experience and a great chance for them to go in and play well.
Richman has yet to see action this fall, but Hazley and Fisher had an impressive showing at last weekend’s Crowne Plaza Invitational in Houston. The tandem made it to the Flight A finals before losing to the No. 1 doubles team in the nation.
In singles play of the championships, six Tigers will attempt to join Richman by working through pre-qualifying and qualifying draws. LSU’s Ken Skupski, Danny Bryan, Colt Gaston and Brandon Nicholson will begin pre-qualifying on Oct. 3, while Hazley and Fisher will begin tournament play in the qualifying draw on Oct. 7.
On the doubles side, the LSU teams of Skupski-Gaston and Bryan-Richman will also start pre-qualifying play on Oct. 3 in hopes of joining Hazley-Fisher in the main draw on Oct. 9.