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UVA Sports Notebook: Tennis in preseason rankings, golf news

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uva-logo-new2Six men’s Cavs earn Preseason ITA individual rankings: The UVA men’s tennis team had six individuals receive preseason singles rankings Monday (Sept. 8) from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. The Cavaliers also had one doubles team ranked prior to the start of the fall season.

Senior Mitchell Frank (Annandale, Va.) was the highest ranked Cavalier in the preseason ITA singles rankings at No. 4. Junior Ryan Shane (Falls Church, Va.) opens the season with a career-high No. 28 ranking. Junior Mac Styslinger (Birmingham, Ala.) and sophomores Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (Charlotte, N.C.) and J.C. Aragone (Yorba Linda, Calif.) round out the Cavaliers in the top 125 at No. 74, No. 80 and No. 117, respectively. Redshirt-freshman Alexander Ritschard (Zurich, Switzerland), who was at Virginia last spring but didn’t compete, is No. 4 on the ITA newcomer rankings.

The doubles team of Styslinger and Ritschard is Virginia’s only ranked doubles team in the preseason rankings, opening the year at No. 60.

The ITA also announced Monday the selections for the ITA All-American Championships, which will be held Sept. 27 to Oct. 6 in Tulsa, Okla. Frank and Shane were selected to the 64-player main draw, while Styslinger, Kwiatkowski, Aragone and Ritschard will be in the qualifying draw. In addition, juniors Harrison Richmond (Pawleys Island, S.C.) and Jonathan Cornish (London, England), sophomore Luca Corinteli (Alexandria, Va.) and first-year Henrik Wiersholm (Kirkland, Wash.) are entered in the pre-qualifying draw.

In doubles, Virginia will have three teams competing in the qualifying draw at the ITA All-American Championships. In addition to the duo of Styslinger and Ritschard, the pairings of Shane/Corinteli and Richmond/Aragone will also compete in Tulsa.

 

Four women’s Cavaliers earn ITA preseason singles rankings: The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) announced the ITA Division I Women’s Preseason Rankings, along with the selections for the 2014 Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships on Monday (Sept. 8).

Virginia junior Julia Elbaba (Oyster Bay, N.Y.), who was runner-up at the inaugural American Collegiate Invitational, opens the season with a No. 5 singles ranking. Reigning NCAA singles champion Danielle Collins (St. Petersburg, Fla.) is ranked a career-best No. 10 and junior Stephanie Nauta (Galveston, Texas) is ranked a career-best No. 32. Earning her first national singles ranking is junior Maci Epstein (Winter Park, Fla.), coming in at No. 122. Elbaba and Nauta are ranked No. 22 in doubles.

Elbaba and Collins lead Virginia’s list of singles participants at the Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships. Elbaba and Collins are among the 22 players in the main draw. Nauta will compete in the qualifying draw, while Epstein and sophomore Marie Faure (Toulouse, France) start in the pre-qualifying draw. Newcomer Skylar Morton (Bethesda, Md.) is an alternate for the pre-qualifying draw.

In doubles, Elbaba and Nauta will compete in the qualifying draw. The UVa tandems of Epstein and freshman Cassie Mercer (Huntington, W.Va.) and Collins and Morton will compete in the pre-qualifying round.

The Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades, Calif., are set to begin on Saturday, Sept. 27 with pre-qualifying singles and doubles matches. Main draw action is slated for Thursday, October 2-5.

Virginia opens the fall season on Sept. 12-14 at the Duke Invitational in Durham, N.C.

 

McCarthy set to compete in World Amateur Team Championship: Virginia senior men’s golfer Denny McCarthy (Rockville, Md.) will compete for the United States team at the 2014 World Amateur Team Championships starting Wednesday, Sept. 10, in Karuizawa, japan. The four-day event concludes Saturday. The U.S. is one of 69 squads from around the globe vying for the Eisenhower Trophy, which will be presented to the overall champion. This is the 29th time the biennial event has been held.

Joining McCarthy on the team will be SMU junior Bryson DeChambeau (Clovis, Calif.) and Texas sophomore Beau Hossler (Mission Viejo, Calif.). McCarthy is ranked No. 14 in the current World Amateur Golf Rankings while Hossler is 11th.

Each team has two or three players and plays 18-holes of stroke play for four days. In each round, the total of the two lowest scores from each team constitutes the team score for the round. The four-day (72-hole) total is the team’s score for the championship.

The tournament will be contested on the Oshitate and Iriyama Courses and hosted by the japan Golf Association. The World Amateur Team Championship was last played in 2012 inAntalya, Turkey, with the USA winning the Eisenhower Trophy for a record 14th time.

The American squad will be attempting to become the first team to win back-to-back WATC titles since the USA won three consecutive titles in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

The World Amateur Team Championship was founded in 1958 and the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship began in 1964. The International Golf Federation (IGF) was founded in 1958 to encourage the international development of golf through friendship and sportsmanship. Today, the IGF consists of 137 national governing bodies of golf representing 131 countries, and is the international federation for golf for the International Olympic Committee. One of its main functions is to conduct the biennial World Amateur Team Championships for men and women.

 

 

 

 

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