SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Santa Clara men's tennis begins the 2016-17 season this weekend at the UC Davis Aggie Invitational in Davis, California. The competition will take place on Sept. 30 – Oct. 2 at UC Davis' Marya Welch Tennis Center.
"We're looking to get a good bearing of where we're starting off," head coach Niall Angus said. "I want to see what our base-level is and what areas we need to work on in order to be ready for the spring. It will help set the tone for the year."
The tournament begins on Friday with individuals from the host UC Davis, San Francisco, Sacramento State, St. Mary's (CA), Stanford, Portland, Nevada, Gonzaga, California and Pacific competing. The competition consists of two flights, A and B, for both men's singles and doubles. The draws can be found here.
Freshmen Vasileios Iliopoulos and Jesus Tapiador Barajas will make their collegiate debuts this weekend. The quartet of sophomores, Connor Garnett, Andrew Gu, Kamran Khan and Robert Seby will also be competing for the Broncos.
Iliopoulos, Gu, Seby, and Barajas Tapiador will compete in singles flight A, starting the round of 32 at 10 a.m. PT on Sept. 30. Garnett earned the No. 2 seed in flight B and is joined by Khan in the flight as well. Garnett begins competition at 11:30 a.m. and Khan starts at 12:30 p.m.
"We're looking to have these guys understand what it takes to compete at this level," Angus said. "Still being a young a team, we need the guys who have been here at least a year to use that experience and start to push on in some of these tournaments. I want to see these guys start to compete for each other and feel what it is to compete as a team. That will be really important as we go through the season."
Garnett and Seby will be paired together for the doubles competition in flight A along with Iliopoulos and Gu. Both duos start the competition at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 30. Khan and Tapiador Barajas make up the final doubles duo and they compete in flight B also at 8:30 a.m.
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