Former top-70 player set for Sacramento qualifying

  Chris Guccione, a former top-70 singles player and the defending doubles champion, is scheduled to face eighth-seeded Nicolas Meister today at 10 a.m. in the first round of qualifying for the $100,000 RelyAid Natomas Challenger at the Natomas Racquet Club in Sacramento.
   Guccione, a 6-foot-7 left-hander from Australia, is ranked No. 572 after reaching a career-high No. 67 in 2008. The 27-year-old veteran missed six months in 2010 with an Achilles' tendon injury.
   In September 2011, Guccione and former world No. 1 singles player Lleyton Hewitt beat 2008 Olympic gold medalists Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka in Sydney in the Davis Cup playoffs. Two weeks later, Guccione and Carsten Ball, a native of Newport Beach, Calif., who plays for Australia, won the doubles title in Sacramento.
   Meister, a 23-year-old Los Angeles-area resident, made his professional debut in June in a $15,000 Futures tournament at the Park Terrace Swim & Tennis Club in Sacramento. The former UCLA All-American reached the singles semifinals and doubles final (with friend and ex-Cal star Pedro Zerbini).
   Two other All-Americans from the Pacific-12 Conference who completed their eligibility this year, Nicholas John Andrews (Cal) and Ryan Thacher (Stanford), also are scheduled to play today in separate matches.
   Andrews, a wild card from the Sacramento suburb of Folsom, will meet Adam Hubble of Australia. Thacher will take on fellow American Jeff Dadamo in a rematch of the 2011 NCAA doubles final at Stanford. Texas A&M's Dadamo and Austin Krajicek, also set to play today in Natomas qualifying, defeated Thacher and Bradley Klahn in a contest featuring four left-handers.
   Seventh-seeded Devin Britton, who edged Dadamo in the Sacramento Futures in June for his first professional singles title, will meet wild card Zeke Hindle of Los Angeles. At Mississippi in 2009, Britton became the youngest NCAA singles champion at 18 years, 2 months and joined Jimmy Connors (1971), John McEnroe (1978) and Cecil Mamiit (1996) as the only male freshmen to win the title.
   Today's schedule also features Northern California wild cards Mackenzie McDonald of Piedmont, Brandon Sutter of El Dorado Hills, Collin Altamirano of Yuba City, Sean Kolar of Loomis and Lovedeep Singh of Sacramento.   
   McDonald, 17, reached the boys singles semifinals at the Australian Open in January and won the boys 18 singles title at the prestigious Easter Bowl junior tournament in Rancho Mirage in April.

ORDER OF PLAY - SATURDAY, SEPT. 29, 2012

 STADIUM start 10:00 am
Qualifying - C Guccione (AUS) vs N Meister (USA)
Qualifying - [WC] M Mcdonald (USA) vs A Courtney (USA)  
 Qualifying - J Jung (USA) vs A Krajicek (USA) 
COURT 1 start 10:00 am
Qualifying - A Hubble (AUS) vs [WC] N Andrews (USA)
Qualifying - J Dadamo (USA) vs R Thacher (USA)
Qualifying - [WC] C Altamirano (USA) vs A Daescu (ROU) 
COURT 2 start 10:00 am
Qualifying - L Gregorc (SLO) vs [WC] O Morel (FRA)
Qualifying - [WC] B Sutter vs S Ianni (ITA)
Qualifying - [WC] Z Hindle (USA) vs D Britton (USA) 
COURT 6 start 10:00 am
Qualifying - [WC] S Kolar (USA) vs [WC] L Singh (USA)
Qualifying - M Santiago (USA) vs A Pavic (CRO)
Qualifying - [WC] L Rosenberg (USA) vs P Simmonds (USA)