Over the summer the bobcats were hard at work getting ready for the upcoming season. After earning his first All-American honors in singles, Matt Bettles went back to England and represented his county in the County Week Tournament. Each county in the UK is divided into 7 divisions of 6 teams. The top two advance, the middle two stay and the bottom two get relegated a division. The standard in the top division is amazing – last year North of Scotland had Jamie Murray (ATP doubles #27) and Colin Fleming (ATP doubles #46) for all 5 days and even Andy Murray turned up for one day, and they still finished 4th.
Each team has 3 doubles pairs and you play 3 matches per day its best of 9 matches. Matt’s team (Somerset) included Alistair Felton from Harvard and Dan Manlow from UAB. They won two matches 8-1, two 7-2 and one 6-3 to claim the title for their division. Matt won 11 out of 15 throughout the week and at least two every day. He had many notable wins including:
Calum Gee from Davidson College NC, #3 singles and #1 doubles
Matthew Nicholson-Lewis from Saint Leo College (D2) #1 singles and doubles
Incoming Cornell University player Sam Fleck
Simon Childs from Louisville University #3 singles and #1 doubles, ranked as high as 54 in D1 singles this year
Toby Martin – currently ranked 1150 in the world singles.
While Matt was tearing up the doubles court in England, Timmy Berg, and Eric Ruta were doing the same in singles. Playing in Florida, Timmy got to the finals of the Longwood Open (draw below). http://tennislink.usta.com/tournaments/Draws/EventDraw.aspx?T=99959&E=1
Unseeded, Timmy knocked off the #6 seed in the first round and then won a close 6-4 6-4 match to put himself against #1 seed Tye Myers, who had just finished 2nd in a national open and was a former Louisville standout. Timmy battled through the Florida heat to come out with a 3rd set tiebreaker win 12-10 to advance to the finals. In the finals Timmy played Julian Link, a former professional with wins over Marcelo Rios, Tommy Robredo, and Ranier Schuttler. Timmy played a great match but came up just short in a 6-4 7-6 (10-8) battle.
Eric Ruta also played a few men’s open tournaments this summer with his first and last being the most successful. In the Rockland County Summer Open, Eric won the tournament coming through in the clutch to win the final 6-4 7-6 (7-5) over Villanova singles player Andrew Adler. Eric reached the semis of two other tournaments before playing in the Rockland County Fall Open. Eric beat his opponents decisively en route to his second summer title. Practice starts this Wednesday and the bobcats are all excited and ready to get the season underway.
