It was a very busy first day of the ITA Men’s Tennis Midwest Regional being held on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College. Host Gustavus was the big winner advancing six players to the fourth round of the singles draw.
The Gustavus men’s tennis had a big first day advancing six players through the first three rounds of the tournament. Second seeded Loren Collins, sixth-seeded Ben Lundell, seventh-seeded Adam Morgan, 12th-seeded Kyle Anderson, 14th-seeded Brett Morse-Karzen and unseeded Claudio Bravo all advanced without dropping a set. Unseeded Claudio Bravo claimed the biggest upset of the day in knocking off #4 seed Mike Solum of St. John’s 6-1, 6-3 in the third round. Sixteen of the 93 players in the singles draw remain. The fourth round of play will take place on Saturday morning and the quarterfinals will take place on Saturday afternoon. The semifinals and finals will be played on Sunday. The draw held quite true to form as only one of the top six seeds was eliminated on the first day (#4 seed Mike Solum of St. John’s). Top-seeded Nick Barnes of Coe College breezed through two matches without dropping a set as did third-seeded Dane Schmidgall of Carthage College and fifth-seeded Phil Williams of Coe. Gustavus leads the tournament with six players remaining in the singles draw while Carleton and Coe have three players each. Carthage has two players remaining while UW-Eau Claire and Hamline have one each.
The winner of the singles tournament advances to the ITA National Small College Championships which will be held in Corpus Christi, ,Texas in late October.