University of North Carolina Athletics
1999 University of North Carolina Men's Tennis Outlook
June 21, 1999 | Men's Tennis
The University of North Carolina men's tennis team will be vying for its eighth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance in 1999 with a talented mixture of experience and youthful enthusiasm dotting the roster and hopefully providing the depth that could bring the Tar Heels back to their traditional place in the Top 25 national rankings. While this year"s team will likely be less experienced than more recent Tar Heel squads, UNC head coach Sam Paul is excited about the opportunity to coach a youthful group which has tremendous potential and which offers great promise for the future of the Tar Heel tennis program.
North Carolina returns five of 12 lettermen and two of four starters from 1998"s 15-10 team and adds five newcomers, all of whom will battle for playing time in the spring season. The new players include a pair of transfers as well as two incoming freshmen for whom Paul harbors high hopes.
Among the departees for the Tar Heels from the 1998 campaign was a talented group of seniors which included four-year starters Rob Tedesco and Tony Thomas as well as fellow classmates Eric Saunders and Sean McDermott. This quartet formed a consistently strong group of players for Carolina who were steady winners for the program since the 1995 season. Tedesco and Thomas were part of Tar Heel teams which advanced to four successive NCAA Tournaments.
As seniors in 1998, they led UNC to another outstanding season. The Tar Heels finished 15-10 overall in dual match play and Carolina was 6-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, good for sole possession of second place in the league. Carolina was a semifinalist in both the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Region II Tournament and the Tar Heels finished the season ranked 49th in the nation by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
This year's senior co-captains Tripp Phillips (Charlotte, N.C.) and Michael Grass (Jacksonville, Fla.), mainstays in the Tar Heel lineup throughout their careers, will look to replace the leadership provided in the past by Tedesco, Thomas, Saunders and McDermott this season for Carolina. Phillips finished the 1997-98 season with a 17-11 singles record and a 17-8 mark overall in doubles. Playing consistently in the top half of the Tar Heels' singles lineup, Phillips was named first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference for the second successive season. He was also Carolina's lone representative in the NCAA Tournament, where he unfortunately dropped a first round singles match.
Grass played his first year at Carolina last year after transferring from Jacksonville University. In his initial year as a Tar Heel, Grass proved to be an outstanding addition to the program. He posted a 16-9 mark in singles and was splendid as a double player, going 20-6 overall. All in all he was as dependable as any player in the Tar Heel lineup as his singles mark would suggest.
Phillips also had a very good sophomore year for Carolina in 1997. During that season he eventually wrangled the top spot in the lineup from Tedesco, after the two split time at No. 1 early. Phillips, a consistently strong and intelligent performer since arriving in Chapel Hill, was Carolina"s lone All-ACC selection in 1997 and he earned his first NCAA singles invitation after completing a 27-9 season, best of all the Tar Heels. Phillips, who fell in the NCAA Round of 32, was the ACC flight #1 singles runner-up, posting a 5-3 mark in conference play.
"He's been dealing with a nagging shoulder injury all fall, but Tripp should be fighting it out for a top three position this spring," says Paul, who has a 79-43 overall record and a 31-9 Atlantic Coast Conference record in five years as the Tar Heels" head coach. "If he can"t go we will have to give serious consideration to red-shirting him."
"This year's team will probably go as far as Tripp and Michael can carry us and that is why we need Tripp to be healthy," Head Coach Sam Paul said. "With our youth, we will need to count on the maturity of these two seniors to carry us through any tough times we might have. Over the past couple of years we relied in a big way on the four kids who were seniors for us last year. Now, they are no longer here. And in reality only Tripp and junior Remi Adamek have been in our program more than one year. So we will throw down the gauntlet for Tripp and Michael and ask them to produce for us in a big way this season. "I anticipate both players should have great senior years," Paul continues. "Both have improved as players in our program and made strong contributions to Carolina tennis both on and off the court."
Other players who will help fill the senior leadership void left by the departed quartet include a troika of returning letter winners. Junior Remi Adamek (Poznan, Poland), junior Aron Breziner (North Miami Beach, Fla.) and sophomore David Cheatwood (Fayetteville, N.C.) are all returning letter winners from the 1998 season.
"We will be looking for all three of these young men to step up their games in 1999," says Paul. "Although they are not as experienced as the two seniors, all of them are familiar with our program and they know the expectations we have."
Adamek returns for his junior season after seeing limited action in 1998, going 2-2 in singles play and 1-2 in doubles action. Last year, Carolina added Breziner, a transfer from Pepperdine University, and he responded by going 6-7 overall in singles and 2-1 in doubles action. Breziner, one of the top-ranking junior-level players from Florida entering college, played the No. 6 position for the Waves as a freshman the previous season in Malibu, finishing with a 12-8 record. Cheatwood showed as much improvement as anyone in the program over the past year and a half. He has a great opportunity this year to play in the top half of the Carolina singles lineup after going 7-9 in singles last year and 12-3 in doubles.
"David really showed us a lot in doubles last year," says Paul. "In fact, if you look at the doubles records posted in 1998 by David, Michael Grass and Tripp Phillips you have to think we have a good chance to be very good in that area this year.
"David's a strong baseliner and he is learning an all-court game which will make him an even better player."
Joining the Tar Heels this spring with be five newcomers--two juniors, one sophomore and two freshmen.
"This is one of the best classes we"ve brought in while I"ve been head coach," Paul said.
"Thanks to that good recruiting year, we"re going to be a team with a lot of depth and we will be very competitive within our own team. Some of these newcomers will make an immediate impact on our program. And in all honesty we will need them to do just that." One such newcomer is Assaf Drori (Jerusalem, Israel), who has played the last two years at the University of New Mexico. As a sophomore last year, Drori was 25-18 in singles and 10-20 in doubles for the Lobos.
Another newcomer Paul expects to figure prominently in the spring season is sophomore Chad Riley (Sugar Land, Texas), a transfer from Texas Christian University's nationally-ranked program.
"Both Assaf and Chad come to us from programs which are consistent winners. They come here with a winner"s mentality and I like that," Paul says. "The addition of those two guys is going to make us a better team." Freshmen Ben Elix (West Beach, South Australia) and Bjorn Rencken (Durban, South Africa) and junior walk-on Ahad Athar (Mount Airy, N.C.) round out the new faces on the 1999 North Carolina squad.
"On paper, Ben Elix and Bjorn Rencken are two of the most outstanding recruits we"ve had," Paul said. "We are in a position where we have to put some pressure on them as freshmen, which we would rather not do. But they both have great potential." Paul hopes another schedule packed with nationally-ranked teams will have the Tar Heels ready to compete in both the ACC and NCAA Tournaments. "It's a national schedule and we're playing the best in the country," Paul says. "Besides our ACC opponents we also play Texas, Miami, South Carolina, VCU, TCU and Texas A&M."
Players Mentioned
