Jan. 11, 2010
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech’s Guillermo Gomez enters the spring tennis season ranked No. 4 in the nation in rankings recently released by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. It is the highest singles ranking ever held by a Tech men’s player.
Gomez, a junior from Alicante, Spain, began the fall ranked No. 5 and inched up one spot after winning 13 of 15 singles matches, sharing the championship of the Southern Intercollegiate Championships in Athens, Ga., and advancing to the finals of the ITA Indoor Championships.
Along the way to the ITA finals, Gomez defeated three players ranked in the nation’s top 20, including No. 3 Robert Farah of Southern California (now No. 14) and No. 14 Michael Shabaz of Virginia (now No. 3). The Trojan’s Steve Johnson, who defeated Gomez in the finals, is No. 1.
“Guillermo has done an incredible job of wanting to work on areas [of his game] and not being afraid to change things that make a difference,” said head coach Kenny Thorne. “He went from not ranked as a freshman to getting up to the 50’s, and he was not happy. He wanted to change some things in order to get to that next level. He improved to 11th, and was not happy with where he finished last spring. He’s constantly inquiring about what else he can do with his game. His mindset is that you win or don’t win, either you’re No. 1 or you’re not. That keeps him motivated to improve things an correct things that aren’t quite there.”
Gomez earned ITA All-America honors last spring after going 29-10 in singles, and also made the All-Atlantic Coast Conference team. He was named ACC Freshman of the Year in 2008 after going 27-12 in singles. He has a 69-24 singles record in his career, and needs seven more wins to move into Tech’s all-time top 10. Thorne, his coach, owns the career record with 112 from 1985-88, and Bryan Shelton, Tech’s women’s coach, is second with 101.
His sophomore teammate, Dusan Miljevic of Novi Sad, Serbia, also made it into the ITA rankings at No. 112 after a strong fall season in which he won nine of 10 singles matches. The Yellow Jackets, No. 43 in the team rankings, open their spring season Friday with a 2 p.m. match against UAB at the Bill Moore Tennis Center, then host USC-Upstate and Georgia Southern in a pair of home matches on Sunday (9 a.m. and 2 p.m.).
