Men’s Tennis in Knoxville for ITA Regionals

Thursday, October 15

Knoxville, Tenn.

All Day

University of Memphis

ITA Ohio Valley Regional

Photo by: Joe Murphy

Oct 14, 2015 | Men's Tennis

Doubles play starts at 8 a.m.

By: Tammy DeGroff

MEMPHIS – The University of Memphis men's tennis team is across the state in Knoxville prepping for Thursday's opening round in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA)'s Ohio Valley Regional. In all, four of Memphis seven entries are seeded in the singles draw, led by defending regional singles champion Andrew Watson, the No. 3 seed in this year's draw. Fellow sophomore Ryan Peniston is also a top 10 seed, and is seeded eighth in the draw. Freshmen Chris Patzanovsky and Felix Rauch are in the 17-32 seeded group.

But the morning will actually begin with one round of doubles at 8 a.m. The team of Kai Lemke and junior Louis Asser are the No. 7 seed in the doubles draw and will open against the Vanderbilt team of Tate Allwardt and Daniel Valent in the first round. Seeded ninth in the draw are Peniston and Rauch. They will open at 8:30 a.m., Thursday, against Wright State's Jose Pestana and Diego Venegas. The final Memphis entry in doubles will be Watson and Manji. That tandem starts play at 8:30 a.m. against the seeded team of Mason Dragos and Ari Gerstein from Butler. The teams that win will advance to Friday morning's doubles round.

Following the one round of doubles play, the Tigers will roll in to singles play. Manji, Patzanovsky and Lemke will be the first Tigers on to the singles courts, looking to advance to a Friday afternoon second round singles match. Rauch goes on at 11 a.m. with Peniston following at noon. Watson (12:30) and Asser (1:30) will round out the Tigers' singles schedule as Memphis tries to advance to afternoon singles matches.

Host Tennessee will run a game day blog to update scores throughout the day. That blog can be found here: http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-tennis/spec-rel/101315aaa.html

Doubles Schedule
Thursday
8 a.m. – Kai Lemke/Louis Asser (Memphis) vs. Tate Allwardt/Daniel Valent (Vanderbilt)
8:30 a.m. – Ryan Peniston/Felix Rauch (Memphis) vs. Jose Pestana/Diego Venegas (Wright State)
8:30 a.m. – Andrew Watson/Shakeel Manji (Memphis) vs. Mason Dragos/Ari Gerstein (Butler)
Round of 32 doubles will be played Friday morning.
Singles Schedule
Thursday
10:00 – Shakeel Manji (Memphis) vs. Jose Pestana (WSU)
10:00 – Chris Patzanovsky (Memphis) vs. No. 17 seed Edu Mena (Tennessee Tech)
10:00 – No. 17-32 seed Kai Lemke (Memphis) vs. Ricardo Pabon (East Tennessee State)
11:00 – No. 17-32 seed Felix Rauch (Memphis) vs. Nils Ellefsen (Kentucky)
Noon – No. 8 seed Ryan Peniston (Memphis) vs. Nemanja Guzina (BSU)
12:30 p.m. – No. 3 seed Andrew Watson (Memphis) vs. Sean Donahue (Louisville)
1:30 p.m. – Louis Asser (Memphis) vs. No. 2 seed Daniel Valent (Vanderbilt)
Second round singles will begin at 1:30 p.m., Thursday.