Tulane University
ITA All-American Tourney
Tulane's Kogan Advances to Quarterfinals at ITA.
Oct 10, 2003 | Men's Tennis
Oct. 10, 2003
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Tulane University senior Michael Kogan (Kfar-Saba, Israel) continued his success at the prestigious Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships on Friday afternoon, defeating No. 26 Doug Stewart from Virginia to advance to the quarterfinals of the event.
Kogan, the three-time Player of the Year in Conference USA, will face Mississippi State's Romain Ambert on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. Kogan is ranked No. 7 in the ITA Preseason Rankings, while Ambert holds the No. 11 ranking.
On Friday afternoon, Kogan had a hard-fought victory over Stewart, winning 7-6, 4-6, 6-4. On Thursday, the Wave standout had toppled No. 99 Erik Nyman from BYU and No. 47 Alex Menichini from TCU.
Ambert has also been impressive in the tournament, upending three ranked players: No. 80 Clayton Almeida (Winthrop), No. 46 Nathan Thompson (Clemson) and No. 71 Adrians Zguns (Arkansas). Ambert has not dropped a set yet in the tourney.
Kogan also had a big Friday win in doubles, pairing with junior Dmitriy Koch (Bueckeberg, Germany) to defeat the No. 11 ranked duo in the nation, Phillip King and Stephen Amritraj from Duke in a tiebreaker, 9-8 (7-4).
However, Kogan and Koch were ousted in the round of 16 by Calle Hansen and Pedro Rico from Pepperdine, 9-7. The 13th-ranked duo of Hansen and Rico had defeated Auburn's fourth-ranked pair of Andrew Columbo and Gabor Zol Pelvo, 8-5, in their first round match.
The Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships included six days of qualifying matches leading up to the this weekend's 64-player, 32-doubles team main draw. 256-singles player and 128-doubles team prequalifying tournaments were played October 3-6 which fed into 64-player and 32-doubles team qualifying tournaments October 7-8. The combined singles tournament fields can run over 350 players and a player who begins in prequalifying must win seven matches just to reach the main draw.
The Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championship, the largest single tournament in the country, offers the first national singles and doubles titles of the season, and are followed by the ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships in November and the the season-ending NCAA Championships in May (the women's counterpart to the Icy Hot/ITA Men's All-American Championships, the Riviera Women's All-American Championships, is hosted by the Riviera Tennis Club in Pacific Palisades).
