Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Men's Tennis Heads West for Porsche Napa Valley Tennis Classic
September 24, 2015 | Men's Tennis
Princeton will send four players to battle those from Texas, Stanford, Baylor, Florida, host California and the USTA Juniors at the Porsche Napa Valley Classic.
Play will begin Friday at noon ET at Meadowood in St. Helena, California with a 32-player singles draw that will include 24 collegiate players and eight from the USTA Juniors group. From there, players will be divided into eight groups of four to play matches against each of the other three in the group, with three collegians and one junior in each group. The eight group winners will then play a 10-point tiebreaker shootout at 4 p.m. ET Sunday with the winner getting a wild card into a USTA Pro Circuit Futures or Challenger event.
Saturday's play will start at 1 p.m. ET with Sunday's play starting at 11 a.m. ET. Princeton's groupings are:
Alex Day with Oskar Wikberg (Cal), Elliott Orkin (Florida), Oliver Crawford (USTA Juniors)
Joshua Yablon with Harrison Scott (Texas), Nolan Paige (Stanford), Brandon Holt (USTA Juniors)
Luke Gamble with Will Little (Baylor), J.T. Nishimura (Cal), Brian Shi (USTA Juniors)
Kial Kaiser with Mads Engsted (Cal), Michael Genender (Stanford), William Howells (USTA Juniors)
The five other schools in the draw have a combined 13 players in the ITA's preseason singles rankings, which includes 125 collegians from across the country. Princeton's Tom Colautti, who will not be competing this weekend, is No. 118.
Princeton's four-man contingent will include juniors Alex Day and Josh Yablon and sophomores Luke Gamble and Kial Kaiser. It'll be a homecoming for Kaiser, who is from Saratoga, California, on the other side of the San Francisco Bay from the tournament site.
For Kaiser and Yablon, it'll be the second tournament this fall after each played in Princeton's Ivy Plus Tournament last weekend, while it'll be the third of the fall for Day and Gamble, who also played in the season-opening Penn Invitational. Gamble leads the group with six singles wins so far on the fall.
Friday's Schedule:
12:30 p.m. ET: Josh Yablon vs. Brandon Holt (USTA Juniors), Luke Gamble vs. Brian Shi (USTA Juniors), Alex Day vs. Elliott Orkin (Florida)
2 p.m. ET: Kial Kaiser vs. Mads Engsted (Cal)