Feb. 3, 2000

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — Notre Dame senior men’s tennis All-American Ryan Sachire rallied for a 6-7 (7-2), 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) win over Arkansas’ sixth-seeded and eighth-ranked Oskar Johansson on Thursday at the Brookhaven Country Club to advance to the second round of the Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the third leg of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association collegiate grand slam. The 14th-ranked Sachire never lost a service game in the match and faced just two break points in the nearly three-hour match. He will take on LSU’s 13th-ranked Tom Hand in the second round on Friday. Hand beat SMU’s Dustin Mauck 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 in the first round.

“It was a tough match,” said Sachire, who improved to 15-5 with the win. “Both of us served really well. It was one of those matches that was pretty intense and basically jeopardized the whole match with one break of serve. We both played really well and kept our cool through the match.”

Sachire’s win on Thursday marks his first main-draw victory in four appearances at the Rolex National Intercollegiates. He won the consolation singles draw last year and dropped three-set, first-round matches to UCLA’s Kevin Kim in 1997 and Vince Allegre in 1998 in his previous appearances. The Irish captain reached the semifinals of the T. Rowe Price National Clay Court Championships in September and lost in the second round of the ITA All-American Championships in October in his two previous grand slam results this season.

The Rolex National Intercollegiates feature a 32-player singles field and 16-team doubles field for men and women, including qualifiers from ITA Regional Championships held across the country during the fall, the Rolex National Small College champions, the winners of the first two legs of the 1999-2000 ITA Grand Slam (the T. Rowe Price National Clay Court and All-American Championships) and at-large and wild card selections made by the ITA National Tournament Committee. Overall, more than 5,000 players from nearly 600 schools participate annually in the ITA Regional and Rolex National Intercollegiate Championships.