Vallverdu Wins Main Draw Opener Over UCLA's Tracy Lin

Oct. 4, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Calif. –Play at the 2007 Riviera/ITA All-American Tennis Championships began today at the Riviera Country Club with Miami’s Laura Vallverdu picking up her first win of the fall season with a first round victory over UCLA’s Tracy Lin, 6-3, 6-3.

“It was really great to see Laura get off to such a strong start to the season today,” head coach Paige Yaroshuk-Tews said. “To beat such a solid opponent as convincingly as she did was not an easy task.”

The match marked the second time Vallverdu and Lin, an NCAA quarterfinalist last year, have met on the collegiate level. In the duo’s first match-up, Vallverdu claimed an identical 6-3, 6-3 win over Lin on Nov. 3, 2006 at the Palm Springs Invite.

“Laura stuck to her game plan and played a really clean match from the first point,” Yaroshuk-Tews said. “I was really impressed with the way she was able to put together this kind of performance to open her season.”

Vallverdu will now advance to the tournament’s second round to face Vanderbilt’s Amanda Taylor, who eliminated the tournament’s top-seeded player, LSU’s Megan Falcon, earlier in the day by a score of 6-2, 6-2.

Vallverdu and Taylor’s second round match is scheduled for 2 p.m. (EST) on Friday. The winner will advance to the quarterfinal round and play again Friday afternoon at 5:30 p.m. (EST).

This is Vallverdu’s second appearance at the Riviera/ITA All American Championships. Last season as a freshman, she defeated Stanford’s Ann Yelsy, ranked 11th in the country at the time, 7-6, 7-3, 6-2 before falling in the second round of play to eighth-ranked Lindsey Nelson of Southern California, 6-1, 6-4.

The main draw portion of the tournament is a four-day event that concludes with the championship match, Sunday, Oct. 4. The 32-player singles tournament features each region’s top-ranked player, 2007 ITA All-Americans and eight qualifiers from this past week’s qualifying round.