A posting by Cory on GEM Tennis from October 11th as he was leaving Mexico is below.
Since then, he won the doubles in the USTA Futures event in Austin, Texas with Connor Pollock (his sixth doubles title in eight tournaments as a professional, with three different partners), and recently qualified for the main draw in the $50K USTA Pro Circuit Challenger event in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he plays world #230 Scoville Jenkins in the first round.
Cory and Todd Paul got a wild card into the main draw of the doubles and will face the #1 seeds, Indian doubles specialist Harsh Mankad (world #103) and form Virginia Cavalier Treat Huey (world #168).
From GEM Tennis:
Hi everyone. I’m currently sitting on a bus that is taking me from Monterrey,Mexico to Austin Texas. I think we’re about 30 minutes from the border. This should be pretty interesting!! I’m taking the week off from singles but am going to Austin to play doubles with my friend Connor Pollock who played for Texas A&M. It was a good week for me in Monterrey. Looking back I feel that during this tournament, I played some really good tennis.
After my last post, I had a really good win by beating the number 1 seed Miguel Gallardo 7-6, 6-3. I thought that I played a really solid and a focused match in front of the Mexican fans that were all cheering against me. A few hours after that singles match, Todd and I went on for our semifinal doubles match. It was a really tough match where we had 2 match points but lost 13-11 in the third set tiebreaker. It was a really tough loss, but I think we will be able to use that match and learn from it.
The next day Todd and I had to play each other in the singles semifinals. That was very weird as we are best friends and have never played before in a tournament. We practice everyday together and know one another so well. It was a little weird as we were both staying in the same hotel together and doing everything together. We even warmed up with each other before the match. During the match, we were both playing pretty bad tennis. Todd with his experience gave me a beating 6-2 6-2. It was not fun playing him but it is something that has a great chance of happening as we travel so much together to these tournaments. It was such a mental match, and I think we both had a lot of trouble forgetting who was on the other side of the net.
Anyway I guess the match was a good learning experience as this entire trip was. I’m very happy with my trip to Mexico as I was able to play in a lot of competitive matches and pick up a decent amount of ATP points that should help my ranking in both singles and doubles. It was also a great experience just being out here playing somewhere different. Being in three different cities in three weeks was very cool. I’ve enjoyed my stay.
For now, I’ll be in Texas playing doubles with Connor and will most likely be going to North Carolina to train with my coach there. Hope to start some doubles success with Connor in Austin. That is all for now.
CP
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