HTA Houston Open Seeds

The seeds are out for the upcoming major zone:

NTRP Men's 4.0 Singles
1. Butt, Zaeem
2. McNeal, Sean
3. Marks, Miles
4. Taylor, James
5. Farmer, Benjamin
6. Smith, Aaron
7. Brown, Gregory
8. Hutchison, Leonard
9. Bacon, Israel
10. Canter, Caleb
11. Salihu, Musa
12. Boyareddigari, Prasanth
13. Kim, Hyung
14. Lee, Gerald
15. Bowman, Trae
16. Drake, Matthew

NTRP Men's 4.5 Singles
1. Sanchez, Alejandro
2. Griggs, Philip
3. Martin Del Campo, Guillermo
4. Luedtke, David
5. Hawkins, Ben
6. Sevin, Scott
7. Ewing, Adam
8. Miles, J.D.
9. Morton, Herbert
10. Rivera, Charlie
11. Schmucker, Greg
12. Robinson, Kevin
13. Patch, John
14. Stollenwerck, Sam
15. Dutchover, Ismael
16. Ramirez, Rene

NTRP Men's 5.0 Singles
1. Reitzel, Regan
2. Green, Timothy

I'm not as informed on the tournament scene as I should be, so feel free to chime in with your opinions. As usual, I will be keeping my eyes open for dangerous floaters and emerging newcomers to see how they will impact the upcoming league season.

Tri-level Nationals

The Freeman-Benzon Houston Tri-Level team has embarked on its journey to Nationals in the Coachella Valley area in California. Nationals are run in conjunction with the BNP Paribas Open. It's a really fun trip despite the strange format employed.

Good luck to the guys. Hopefully Red, Freeman or Kern will chime in with some stories/results.

If the Tourney blog has truly died I will gladly devote some space to discussion of the upcoming "Coke" tournament. I hope everyone's brackets are doing better than mine.

Agassi and Sampras don't like each other

Here's the video of their charity match.

Lakeside

As usual, signups for summer league are slow until the deadline approaches. I did find it interesting that Lakeside Country Club is fielding a summer league 4.5 team. With Tommy Connell, Quack Bui and Stephen Ash they have a solid foundation to build upon. Hopefully we will have another competitive team in a year which looks to be wide open.

Help me out.

Friends of mine are asking me to recommend someone to teach their 7 year old son tennis. I feel like I should know who's a good pro for juniors, but I really don't have an educated opinion. Can someone with a ringing endorsement post it or email me at houstonleaguetennis@gmail.com? Thanks.

Tri-Level

Tri-level Sectionals were held this weekend at Kingwood Country Club. As expected, the finals came down to Houston versus Dallas with Jason Freeman's team squeaking past Bob Bender's Dallas squad 2-1.

Freeman had a deep lineup of 4.5 players to choose from: Matt Sumrall, Odion Dibua, Jason Kern and Red Benzon. Pat Albro, Kris Knutson and Alex Ellingson were the 4.0's and Chad Luhan and Troy Ralls played the 3.5 line. The team advances to Palm Springs for Nationals, which is played in a strange format.

Tri-Level is a lot of fun, but the participation rates are abysmal. Let's face it, 3.5 players and 4.5 players rarely travel in the same tennis circles. I would think there will be or has been some discussion in USTA circles about getting rid of it.

Event this weekend.

There will be some good tennis going on at the Met this weekend. Friday at 6PM features a match between Texas and Texas A&M, who meet annually for the Texas Cup in Houston. It will be some elite tennis from two top programs.

Also, in conjunction with the match, the Met runs the "Alumni Challenge" doubles tournament. The Championship division features elite/professional players like Tommy Ho, Graydon Oliver, Jack Brasington, the Barker twins and many others. Play in the Championship division will begin immediately prior to the Aggie-Longhorn match. There are other divisions of play and several 4.5 league players have already entered the A division. Anyone interested in playing can contact Keith Christman at 713-652-0700.

Hook 'em!