Busy weekend for both tennis programs

High-profile matchups are scheduled for Friday as the Miami men’s and women’s tennis teams are slated to face number No. 4 Duke and No. 13 Georgia Tech respectively.

Match play begins for the men at 10 a.m. with doubles play followed by singles. In the same format, the women start at 2 p.m.

The action begins in the morning with the men in doubles, where Miami enters with two opportunities. In the No. 1 spot will be junior Luigi D’Agord and freshman Daniel Vallverdu facing the 29th-ranked team of junior Joey Attas and senior Jonathan Stokke. On court two, Miami senior Eric Hechtman will look to extend his record as the Hurricanes’ all-time leader in doubles victories after achieving win 82 last Sunday against Maryland.

Number one singles for the men provides a clash between the fifth and seventh ranked players nationally as Duke’s Ludovic Walter faces D’Agord. Entering the match with D’Agord, Walter has won 10 matches against ranked opponents and is 21-7 in 2006. D’Agord is riding a 10-match winning streak, last defeating Maryland’s Nickolai Nielsen 6-3, 6-2.

On the women’s side, it will be a clash of unbeaten Atlantic Coast Conference teams with the Yellow Jackets coming to Coral Gables boasting a roster with Kristi Miller, a sophomore and the top-ranked women’s player in the country, and senior Lyndsay Shosho in doubles, ranked 12th in the nation. Miller, the first Tech women’s tennis player to be named an All-American, earned the ACC’s Tennis Performer of the Week honors by helping her team go 3-1 last week against ranked opponents.

In the No. 1 doubles spot to start the day will be the duo of Tech’s Miller and Shosho against Miami’s Audra Cohen and senior Melissa Applebaum, ranked 10th in the country.

The main event for the day pits Cohen against Miller for a second time at the No. 1 singles spot, where Cohen is ranked third in the country and has a perfect record at 20-0. In her last match, Cohen downed N.C. State’s Shona Lee 7-6, 6-3.

In Miller’s last outing, she fell to No. 11 Zuzana Zemenova of Baylor in straight sets 6-3, 6-3.

The women’s victor on Friday will stand alone atop the ACC standings.

Both ‘Canes squads will return to action at home Sunday, where the men take on North Carolina at 10 a.m. and the women face Clemson at 11 a.m.

Rodolfo Tomarchio can be contacted at r.tomarchio@umiami.edu.