The Southern Intercollegiates in Athens will crown its Division 1 and Division II singles champions on Monday as well as a Division I doubles champion.
The Division I singles draw comes down to Georgia’s Wayne Montgomery (14.36 UTR) and Georgia Gwinnett’s Kevin Konfederak (13.65 UTR). Montgomery, who is the defending champion, picked up a tough 7-6(2), 7-6(5) win in the one semifinal over Georgia Tech’s Christopher Eubanks while Konfederak won the other semifinal over Georgia’s Paul Oosterbaan 7-6(3), 4-6, 7-6(2).
John Frierson had a detail-filled recap of the Montgomery/Eubanks match which mentioned that Eubanks lost a few points due to his grunting which made a sound like an out call.
Georgia Gwinnett had a nice recap of Konfederak’s win over Oosterbaan which includes some quotes from Konfederak and from D2 singles finalist Lachlan McPhee. The 3rd set of the Konfederak/Oosterbaan match was a wild back and forth affair. Oosterbaan broke Konfederak in the 3rd game to go up 2-1 then held for a 3-1 lead. Konfederak then reeled off 4 straight games and would serve for the match up 5-3. Oosterbaan would break from 30-40 to put it back on serve at 4-5 and then he held at love to even it at 5-5. Oosterbaan would break again from 30-40 to go up 6-5 and then the big 6’7″ redshirt sophomore went up 40-0 to give himself 4 match points (playing no-ad scoring). Konfederak fought off all 4 match points to break and send the match to a deciding 3rd set tiebreak. Konfederak jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the TB and led 4-2 at the changover and would then take the next 3 to finish it off 7-2.
Konfederak will try to become the first NAIA player and second ever non-D1 player to win the Division I draw of this event which is now in its 48th year (those tidbits came from the GGC recap). Konfederak finished last year ranked #5 in the NAIA singles rankings while Montgomery finished the year ranked #26 in Division 1 and is expected to be ranked #16 in the preseason rankings. The final is set for 1:30pm eastern.
The Division II singles draw comes down to GGC’s Lachlan McPhee (13.21 UTR) and Clemson’s Christian Harris (11.99 UTR) with first serve going up at 10am eastern. Harris beat McPhee 6-3, 6-2 a year ago in the semifinals of the D3 draw in route to winning the crown.
Georgia State’s Felipe Jaworski (12.21 UTR) won the Division III singles title with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Tennessee Tech’s Alberto Esteban (12.25 UTR)
The Division I doubles draw will have the semifinals played at 10am and its finals no earlier than 12 noon. Georgia’s Austin Smith and Ben Wagland will face Clemson’s Robert Dudley and Luke Johnson in the one semifinal with the other being an all-Memphis matchup pitting Ryan Peniston and Felix Rauch versus Louis Asser and Kai Lemke. Memphis has a recap with some quotes from its guys.
Georgia Tech’s Elijah Melendez and Daniel Yun won the Division II doubles title with an 8-5 win over Lander’s Marc Hofer and Loic Minery in the finals – read GT’s recap for quotes.
(FYI, the Division I draw isn’t just for D1 schools, the Division II draw isn’t just for D2 schools and so forth; guys are picked based off skill level so guys that will likely play higher in the lineup at their respective schools played the D1 draw while guys that will play lower played in the D2 and D3 draws)
Live scoring of Monday’s matches can be found here.
Full draws and results (including consolation matches) can be found below and here.
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