SURPRISE, Arizona — For the second year in a row, Alex Lebedev of the University of Notre Dame’s men’s tennis program will compete at the ITA Fall National Championships. The tournament will begin Wednesday, November 7 and run through Sunday, November 11 at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex in Surprise, Arizona. The championships will feature a 64-player main draw for men’s singles and doubles will begin with the round of 32. The champion of the singles draw will receive an automatic wildcard bid to the main draw of a 2019 Oracle Challenger Series tournament.
“This week represents another awesome experience and opportunity for Alex,” head coach Ryan Sachire said. “He has been training hard and playing extremely well leading up to this event.”
Advancing to the quarterfinal round of competition at the 2018 ITA All-American Championships in October, Lebedev earned a berth in the national tournament. Entering the season ranked 19th in the Oracle ITA Preseason rankings, Lebedev joins multiple top-25 individual tennis players in the NCAA. The most notable being Petros Chrysochos (Wake Forest) who ranks first in the NCAA and 440th in the world.
At last year’s tournament, Lebedev advanced to the round of 16 before dropping 6-4 and 6-3 decisions to second-seeded Nuno Borges of Mississippi State. In the first round he beat Johannes Ingildsen of Florida 6-1, 7-5 before defeating Marcus Walters (Tyler Jr. College) with a pair of 6-4 sets in the round of 32.
“He will undoubtedly give a great effort and represent our program at the highest level,” Sachire added. “I’m excited to see what he can do this week.”
The Irish will have a brief off-season before their dual meets begin in January. To start the spring season, the team will have three road matches at Kentucky, Vanderbilt and a yet-to-be-determine opponent before welcoming Virginia, Texas A&M and IUPUI the first weekend of February (Feb. 1-3).
All results, draws and live scoring of the 2018 ITA Fall Nationals can be found at the link here.
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