EDWARDSVILLE – Alex Knight of Miami came away with a spot in next week’s USTA Edwardsville Futures tennis tournament main draw as he defeated Montreal’s Sid Domarski in Thursday’s final of the Futures Pro Wildcard Challenge tournament presented by TheBANK of Edwardsville at the Edwardsville High School Tennis Center.
Knight defeated Domarski 6-2, 6-4 in the final to win the spot in the main draw, which gets under way Tuesday; Knight reached the final by defeating Vuk Budic of Chicago 6-1, 7-6 (7-2) in a semifinal match Thursday morning, while Domarski eliminated Jibari Nettles of Detroit 6-4, 6-4 in the other semifinal match.
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Nettles, Catalin Fifea of Bucharest, Romania, and Jason Kerst of Ann Arbor, Mich, who plays at Iowa, all won spots in this weekend’s qualifying tournament with their finishes in the Challenge; eight spots in the main draw are available to participants in the qualifier this weekend.
“This was professional tennis here in the final,” said assistant tournament director Kirk Schlueter, “two absolute great players really battling it out in tough conditions – it’s a real treat to see be able to see tennis like that here in Edwardsville.”
Domarski found a way to finish out his match against Knight despite some cramping he had during the final. “His body failed him at the end,” Schlueter said. “His spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak; that’s a tough part of tennis – he played a lot of tennis the last three days and I think it caught up with him. The good news for him is that he’s actually in the qualifying draw, so he can take (Friday) off and come back for the draw on Saturday.
“A lot of respect to (Domarski) and a lot of respect to Alex Knight, the No. 1 player at Michigan and an All-American; he showed why today. That was a very high level of tennis that he was able to impose on that court.”
One thing that makes the Wildcard Challenge stand out from other tournaments on the Futures circuit is that the wild card spots have to be earned. “One of the things that we talk about is that we don’t give out our wild cards,” Schlueter said. “A lot of tournaments do, but we make guys play for them – Alex Knight earned his wild card; that’s something really special.”
Local players also did well in the Wildcard Challenge; Edwardsville’s Seth Lipe finished in 14th place in the tournament while Zach Trimpe also did well in the tournament. “A lot of local guys got to play in this and I think it’s great to have that local flavor,” Schlueter said, “especially from a high school coach’s standpoint; there’s nothing more valuable than your guys getting to play people who are better than they are and getting to learn from seeing high-class tennis.”
In Thursday’s back-draw matches, Trimpe defeated Jack Lunn of Lake Forest, Ill., 6-0, 6-1 and Belleville’s Max Skaer 7-6 (9-7), 3-0 (retired) while Skaer advanced to meet Trimpe when Tom Bickel of Winnetka, Ill, defaulted, while Kris Ortega of Homer Glen, Ill, defeated David Metz of Palm Harbor, Fla., 6-1, 6-2 in the 11th-place match and Ian Deiters of Indianapolis defeated Scott Bickel of Winnetka on a default in the 15th-place match.
The main singles and doubles draws of the Futures tournament, presented by the EGHM Foundation, is scheduled to get under way Monday; for more information and updates on the events, visit www.edwardsvillefutures.com
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