ORLANDO – The UCF men's tennis team is set to begin it's 2022-23 fall campaign with by hosting the UCF Fall Sizzler from Friday-Sunday at the USTA National Campus.
This will be the only tournament of the fall that the Knights get to host as they'll have a bit of a home court edge over the rest of the field. Student-athletes from North Florida, FGCU, Cornell, Georgia Southern, Kennesaw State and Furman will be participating in the 53-player singles draw. Doubles will be played as well, with 26 tandems suiting up across two doubles draws.
Every player on the Knights' roster aside from Lleyton Cronje will be participating in the event. Cronje is currently taking part in the Davis Cup, the world's premiere international team event.
Bogdan Pavel and Cronje begin the season ranked at No. 24 in doubles. While one part of that duo won't be participating in UCF's first tournament of the fall, the other will. Pavel was named the number one seed of the red singles draw, earning himself a bye into the quarterfinals. He'll face the winner of FGCU's Gugliemo Stefanacci and Georgia Southern's Valentin Dun's match. Pavel went 10-9 in singles last season and was one of three Knights to hit double figures during the dual match season.
Two Knights find themselves in the orange draw of singles play. Emilio Sanchez will face North Florida's Rodrigo Crespo at 8 a.m. on Friday while Mehdi Benchakroun, the number two seed of the orange draw, will earn a bye. Benchakroun will face the winner of Stetson's Juan Jose Gasceron and North Florida's Spencer Dorosheff's match in the quarterfinals. Both Benchakroun and Sanchez will be participating in their first tournament as a Knight.
Another pair of Knights are listed in the green draw, with Quinn Snyder facing Georgia Southern's Alex Suk on Friday at 8 a.m. and Luca Hotze facing Furman's John Rado at around 10 a.m. Hotze is another new member of the UCF squad this season.
Cooper White is the only member of the Black and Gold slated to play in the blue singles draw, as he'll face Kennesaw State's Anthony Weingarten.
UCF will have three doubles tandems in action over the weekend, with Pavel and Benchakroun checking in as the top seed in the fire doubles draw. Sanchez and Snyder are also in the fire draw and will match up with FGCU's Bradford and Lopez at about 1 p.m. White and Hotze match up with Georgia Southern's Blair and Castillo in the ice doubles draw, also getting underway around 1 p.m.
All singles matches will be played with a super tiebreaker as a third set if necessary. Doubles will be one set, first to six, just like a standard college tennis match.
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