Hill secures spot in singles semifinals at Jack Kramer Invitational

ROLLING HILLS ESTATES, Calif. – Sean Hill advanced to the singles semifinals and Hill and Mateo Vereau Melendez moved on to the doubles quarterfinals at the Jack Kramer Invitational on Friday.

“We’re here to get match play, so it was another great day at the Kramer Club,” BYU head coach Brad Pearce said. “Certainly, a highlight was Sean Hill coming back from being down 1-5 in the third set and fighting off four match points to ultimately prevail 7-5 in the third set to reach the singles semifinals. Mateo had another good showing by reaching the singles quarterfinals and will team up with Sean in the quarterfinals of doubles tomorrow.”

Singles

No. 2 seed Hill won back-to-back matches, landing him a spot in the singles semifinals.

In the round of 16, Hill defeated BYU’s Sam Tullis in straight sets at 6-0, 6-0, sending him to the quarterfinals where he faced the No. 5 seed Ben Goldberg of UCLA. Despite being held at match point four times, Hill came out victorious with a 6-0, 3-6, 7-5 win over Goldberg.

Vereau Melendez won his round of 16 match against Chethan Swanson of UC Davis, 6-1, 7-6. In the quarterfinals, Vereau Melendez fell 3-6, 4-6 to the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Stepan Holis.

Jack Barnett dropped his match in the round of 16 to Raul Dobai of UNM, 3-6, 2-6.

Doubles

No. 3 seeded Cougar duo, Hill and Vereau Melendez, topped their round of 16 opponents Alex Dominguez and Joshua Williams of UC Santa Barbara, 8-2, securing their spot in the doubles quarterfinals.

Barnett and Matheus Ferreira Leite fought hard against David Goulak and Ivan Thamma of UC Davis but fell short 6-8. David Ball and Vinicius Feijao Nogueira faced UCLA’s Connor Hance and Goldberg, but lost, 5-8 while Cougar pair Brocton Andrus and Kobe Tran dropped their match, 2-8, to Nico Borter and August Holmgren of the University of San Diego.

Tomorrow, Hill will face UNM’s Stepan Holis with hopes of moving on to the championship match. Hill and Vereau Melendez will face San Diego’s Borter and Holmgren in the doubles quarterfinals.

The tournament results and bracket information can be found here.