Hi UT Tennis Fan,
It has been a few weeks since I have been in touch, so I wanted to check in with a quick update. Play has already begun at the ITA All American Championships in Tulsa, OK. Lucas Brown was our only player in pre-qualifying, and he won all three of his matches in straight sets. He will begin play in qualifying today. In qualifying doubles, Pierre-Yves Bailly and Jonah Braswell will join Sebastian Gorzny and Lucas and will begin play this afternoon. Main draw play begins on Wednesday: Pierre, Jonah, and Sebastian will all be in the singles draw.
Congrats to Siem Woldeab and Cleeve Harper who each picked up pro doubles titles within the last two weeks. Siem won a $15 ITF event in Tunisia, and Cleeve continued his torrid start in pro doubles by winning his first Challenger title in Spain, and following that up with a run to the final last week. Eliot Spizzirri and Micah Braswell continue to battle on the Challenger circuit, and both have made good progress. Eliot is already in the top 300 in the world, and Micah has fallen just short in some key matches, but I fully expect that he will make a big jump soon.
On another note, as some of you may know we have recently begun to raise money for a fund we call "First Serve." First Serve is part of the Texas One Fund, but is specifically for Men's Tennis. Our goals for this fund are to encourage our team to have a greater presence in the community, help them (and their families) offset the gap between the costs they incur because of the gap between their scholarship and the actual costs of going to school at Texas (over $60k per year out of state), and to remain competitive in the new age of college athletics. Even our top players are not on full scholarships, and that is because we have only the NCAA maximum 4.5 scholarships to take care of our 10 players (10 is always the goal squad size). If you would like to learn more about First Serve please feel free to contact me directly either by e-mail or phone.
Thanks so much for your interest in, and support of our program. Have a great week! Hook'em!
Sincerely,
Bruce Berque