Tennis, Tennis and more Tennis

©Colette Lewis 2005
--Columbus OH--

When nearly twelve hours of tennis at the ITA Indoor came to a close on Friday, there were nearly as many storylines as there were matches. In roughly chronological order, here are a few of them:

Hometown favorites Scott Green and Ross Wilson of Ohio State, the second seeds and defending champions, drew the day's biggest crowd, and responded by earning a spot in Saturday's doubles semifinals with the other three seeded teams.

Women's top seed Nicole Leimbach of Texas Christian was upset by Zuzana Cerna of Baylor in straight sets.

Mislav Hizak of NAIA Embry-Riddle notched another win, taking out Notre Dame's Parbhu Shiva. Casey Angle, the ITA's Communications Director was quick to determine that by making the quarterfinals, Hizak had matched the best showing ever by a Small College Champion, joining Central Oklahoma's Charl Bornman (98) and SIU-Edwardsville's Ken Flach and Robert Seguso (83) in the record books.

Stanford's KC Corkery was only getting started when he and partner James Pade racked up a consolation doubles win Friday morning. Corkery's straight set win over Martin Sayer of Radford earned him his third match of the day, and it went the distance. The Stanford senior held off Hizak 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to earn his semifinal spot.

Duke's Ludovic Walter was seeded second last month at the All-American in Tulsa, but after an early round loss to Matt Bruch there, he was unseeded for the Indoor. But by beating fifth seed Jerry Makowski of Texas A & M and third seed Lars Poerschke of Baylor back to back (in straight sets no less) today, he emphatically demonstrated that he's one of the nation's top collegiate players.

It's unsurprising, given his serving prowess, that John Isner finds himself playing a lot of tiebreaks. In his three wins, the six-foot nine-inch righthander from Georgia has played four tiebreaks, winning three of them.

UCLA's Ben Kohlloeffel, the fourth seed, has not lost a set enroute to the semifinals

In the women's NCAA this year, Stanford's two doubles teams played each other for the Championship, and it's possible that the Indoors' two finalists will be Cardinal teammates. Theresa Logar and Alice Barnes have formidable semifinal hurdles in Kristi Miller and Diana Srebovic, but if they clear them, Stanford is assured of a champion.

Barnes is the only player, male or female, still in main draw singles and doubles.

After Frantic Friday, Saturday's schedule is downright serene, with the day's final matches--the main draw singles semifinals-- set to begin around 1:30 p.m.

See Marcia Frost's take on today's action at collegeandjuniortennis.com