13 teams fill up tennis field for Gophers Invitational

Wanna watch some high level tennis? Indoors or outdoors?

The place to go is the U's main campus. The Gophers, under third-year coach Chuck Merzbacher, will host a 13-team tournament.

Meaning all the available courts inside and outside will be used at times for matches.

Who's there? Five Iowa schools: Drake, Iowa, Iowa St., and Northern Iowa. Two from Wisconsin, the Badgers and UW-Milwaukee. Three from the Dakotas: North Dakota, South Dakota and South Dakota St.

And a couple out of the region: Eastern Michigan, Northern Illinois and Kentucky.

Doubles matches will be played first each day, starting at 9 a.m.

Friday there will be five eight-team doubles draws and each will play down to a winning team. Saturday and Sunday new doubles draws will do the same thing.

OK, it's kinda complex. But I'm sure there will be draws posted somewhere so fans who stop by can figure out who is playing whom, when and where.

Merzbacher seems to have the Gophers going in the right direction in terms of becoming a winner. His first team was 10-5 overall, 3-8 in the Big Ten. Last year the Gophers improved to 17-9 and 6-5. That's the most overall wins and Big Ten wins since 2003.

Who knew?

The Gophers return seven players, including four who had over 20 wins. They are:

* Julia Courter, 25-16 in singles, 24-10 in doubles ... She was on a doubles team that took third in the top flight of this tournament a year ago. ... Junior from Lawrenceville, Ga.

* Jessika Mozia ... 23-17 in singles ... She won her flight in this tournament a year ago. ... Junior from Littleton, Colo.

* Tereza Brichacova ... 20-16 in singles, 16-18 in doubles ... She played No. 1 singles in 22 spring matches. ... She won her flight in this tournament a year ago. ... Senior from Prague, Czech Republic.

Newcomers are two freshmen, Caroline Ryba from Glenville, Ill., and Mehvish Safdar from Mason, Ohio, and junior Alexandra Bergman, a transfer from UConn.

INTERNATIONAL GAME

On the other 12 teams, there are seven Minnesotans returning home. Here is the short list:

Iowa State: Natalie Phippen, Lakeland

North Dakota: Aliza Deming, Afton; Lexi Larson, Long Prairie; Faith Lee, Andover, Lacey Sprinkel, Minneapolis

South Dakota St.: Tacy Haws-Lay, Minneapolis

What's eye-opening is the number of international players in college tennis. There are 51 in this tournament, from 24 different countries.

Countries with more than one player in the Minnesota Invitational:

Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Indonesia, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine 2.

Countries with one:

Croatia, El Salvador, France, India, Isreal, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

WATCH WILDCATS

Kentucky is probably the team to watch in this tournament. The Wildcats made the NCAA tournament last spring for the first time since 2009 and reached the Round of 16 before falling 4-1 to Virginia.

The Wildcats finished 17-12 overall and 6-9 in the SEC last season.