{"id":521,"date":"2019-05-01T14:13:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T14:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/?p=521"},"modified":"2019-06-13T14:19:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T14:19:57","slug":"battle-of-the-alamo-irt-tier-4-and-mixed-pro-doubles-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/01\/battle-of-the-alamo-irt-tier-4-and-mixed-pro-doubles-wrap-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Alamo IRT Tier 4 and Mixed Pro Doubles wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Natera the double winner on the weekend in San Antonio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was quite a busy weekend for pro racquetball. A 35-man IRT tier 1 draw in Florida was actually missing a slew of quality players, who opted mostly to stay closer to home and compete in the IRT tier 4 draw held in conjunction with the LPRT Battle at the Alamo event in San Antonio, TX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of the quality of the event, and the solid mixed pro doubles event, I thought i’d do a quick review of the draws here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A note: we do not load lower IRT tier events into the database, but as a fan of the game here’s a draw review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

r2 sports IRT draw: https:\/\/www.r2sports.com\/tourney\/drawsOut\/view-bracket.asp\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—————————–
A 15-man pro draw; here were the notable results round by round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 16s:
– Erik Garcia<\/strong><\/a> won a rematch of the USAR intercollegiate finals earlier this month, topping Texan Alejandro Almada<\/strong><\/a> in a tiebreaker. 
– Alejandro <\/strong>Alex Cardona<\/strong><\/a> whitewashed the youngster Sebastian Longoria<\/strong> 0,0. Sebastian Longoria is playing in his age 17 season, while Cardona is one of the top 15-20 players in the world, so this is hopefully a good learning experience for Sebastian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Quarters:
– #1 seed Gerardo Franco Gonzalez<\/strong><\/a> beat #9 seed A.J. Fernandez<\/strong> 4,5.
– #5 Seed Garcia got a very solid win over #4 Ernesto Ochoa<\/strong><\/a> in a tiebreaker. I have Ochoa in my top 30, and Garcia just took a big step up based on this win and his performance against Rocky Carson<\/strong> at qualifiers in Feb.
– Perpetually under-seeded Alan Natera Chavez<\/strong><\/a> took out #3 Javier Estrada<\/strong><\/a>7,7. Natera has wins over Javier Mar<\/strong> and Rodrigo Montoya<\/strong> in the past year and has made the semis of Mexican Nationals two years running … but has never appeared in a Tier 1 IRT event and thus has no points. 
– #7 seed Cardona topped #2 seed, IRT regular Nick Riffel<\/strong><\/a>11 and 12. A tough first match-up for Riffel in this event, coming up against the two-time WRT tour winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the semis:
– #1 Franco topped Garcia 3,7, ending the collegiate champ’s run.
– #6 Natera squeaked by Cardona 11-10 in the breaker, probably a good indicator of where both players are right now. I think its probably fair to say the bottom half of this draw was more challenging than the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final, Natera defended his San Antonio title by wiping out Gerardo Franco 10 and 5. A solid weekend of victories over world top 30 players for Natera, who continues to impress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mixed Pro Doubles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, the LPRT didn’t play ladies pros and instead opted for Mixed Pro doubles. So there was a solid draw of 14 Mixed pro teams that included most of the top LPRT pros playing with (primarily) the Mexican traveling pro players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final, Paola Longoria<\/strong><\/a> teamed with Gerardo Franco to face Montse Mejia<\/strong><\/a>, who was playing Natera. Mejia and Natera came out on top, making Natera the double winner on the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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International Racquetball Tour<\/a> LPRT<\/a> USA Racquetball<\/a> Federaci\u00f3n Mexicana de Raquetbol<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was quite a busy weekend for pro racquetball. A 35-man IRT tier 1 draw in Florida was actually missing a slew of quality players, who opted mostly to stay closer to home and compete in the IRT tier 4 draw held in conjunction with the LPRT Battle at the Alamo event in San Antonio, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Battle of the Alamo IRT Tier 4 and Mixed Pro Doubles wrap-up”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3,7,98],"tags":[145,90,258,104,146,17,89,86,64,33,60,15,92,277],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doubles","category-irt","category-lprt","category-singles","category-usa","tag-aj-fernandez","tag-alan-natera","tag-alejandro-almada","tag-alejandro-cardona","tag-erik-garcia","tag-gerardo-franco","tag-javier-estrada","tag-javier-mar","tag-monserrat-mejia","tag-nick-riffel","tag-paola-longoria","tag-rocky-carson","tag-rodrigo-montoya","tag-sebastian-longoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}