Women's Tennis Hosts Gator Fall Classic Beginning Friday
Thursday, September 24, 2009 | Women's Tennis
The University of Florida women's tennis team plays host this weekend to its only home event of the fall season. The three-day Gator Fall Classic begins Friday at Linder Stadium at Ring Tennis Complex and admission is free.
Eight of the nine Gators on the 2009-10 roster are expected to compete against athletes from UCF, Ole Miss and South Florida in the individual singles and doubles tournament, which will not have a traditional draw format. Instead, athletes will be assigned to play a singles match in one of six different flights. A win playing a Flight 1 or 2 match results in six points, a win in Flight 3 or 4 is worth four points and a victory in Flight 5 or 6 will be two points. The player with the most points at the end of the weekend will be declared the singles champion. Competitors are allowed to play in different flights each day.
A similar format will be followed for crowning the doubles champion. The winner, however, will be an individual and not a doubles team, since schools are allowed to pair different athletes each day in the doubles competition.
Every morning, each school will submit a list of the athletes it wants to compete in a specific flight, so pairings will not be available until 30 minutes prior to the start of action.
The Florida men's team also is hosting the Gator Invitational on the same days, so tennis action will plentiful at the Ring Tennis Complex.
Friday's matches begin at 1 p.m. with women's doubles play, followed by singles action. The men take the court at 4 p.m. on Friday. On Saturday, the men's tournament is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., followed by women's play at 1 p.m. On Sunday to accommodate travel schedules, men's and women's doubles matches begin at 9 a.m., followed by men's singles matches and then women's singles play. All doubles matches on Sunday will be played to 6, with a tiebreak at 6-all.
“We will most likely rotate different doubles line-ups throughout the tournament because I want to see many different combinations as possible,” UF head coach Roland Thornqvist said. “It's important to be able to see who can communicate and whose games mesh when you play under the lights. This is a great opportunity for us to do that.”
Florida returns its top four members from last year's singles and doubles lineup, as the squad advanced to the round of 16 at the NCAA Tournament.
Senior Marrit Boonstra (Groningen, Netherlands) headlines the list of returning Gators, entering the year as the No. 3-ranked singles player in the ITA preseason listing and is No. 10 in doubles pairing with sophomore Joanna Mather (Duluth, Ga.), who is No. 86 in the singles chart. Senior Anastasia Revzina (Moscow, Russia), who is ranked No. 33 singles, teams with Jessica Alexander (Dallas, Texas) at the No. 10 spot in the preseason doubles ranking. Alexander is No. 104 in the singles listing.
The Gators also welcome the nation's No. 1-ranked recruiting class according to tennisrecruiting.net is headlined by freshmen Lauren Embree (Marco Island, Fla.), the No. 2-listed recruit in the country and Allie Will (Boca Raton, Fla.), the No. 6 recruit in the nation. Other new faces suiting up this season include freshman Caroline Hitimana (Waterloo, Belgium), sophomore transfer Claire Bartlett (Chattanooga, Tenn./Univ. of Virginia) and Brittany Borsanyi (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.).
| Complete Schedule of Tennis Events for Sept. 25-27 Gator Fall Classic (women) and the Gator Invitational (men) Linder Stadium at Ring Tennis Complex Gainesville, Fla. | |
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| Friday | |
| 1 pm | Women's Doubles, with Women's Singles to follow |
| 4 pm | Men's play begins |
| Saturday | |
| 10 am | Men's play begins |
| 1 pm | Women's Doubles, with Women's Singles to follow |
| Sunday | |
| 9 am | Men's & Women's Doubles, with Men's Singles to follow and Women's Singles matches to follow those |
-UF-
