Mateo Reyes, a top junior tennis player from Florianopolis, Brazil, has signed a national letter of intent with the University of Georgia men’s tennis program, head coach Manuel Diaz announced on Tuesday.
Reyes is the fourth signee of Georgia’s highly-ranked 2019 class. The Brazilian star will join Baptiste Anselmo (Aix-en Provence, France), Erik Grevelius (Stockholm, Sweden) and Tyler Zink (Bradenton, Florida) as incoming freshmen, starting with the 2019 fall semester.
This past winter, before the Bulldogs signed Anselmo and Reyes, Georgia’s class was ranked No. 4 nationally according to tennisrecruiting.net.
“We are very excited about the addition of Mateo to our very strong recruiting class of 2019 and beyond,” Diaz said. “Mateo has had some very impressive wins throughout his career and has huge potential. We can’t wait to get him here in Athens to start working with him and help him develop his game even more.”
Reyes earned a career-high International Tennis Federation (ITF) ranking of 134 and has a career-best Universal Tennis Rating of 13.39.
Among his career highlights, the left-handed Reyes won the Roland-Garros Junior Wild Card Championship last May with decisive victories over India’s Siddhant Banthia 6-3 6-3 and China’s Xinmu Zhou 6-4, 6-2. Those wins allowed him to play in the main draw of Roland Garros.
Reyes was ranked as high as second in Brazil at the age of 16 before he started playing in ITF events. He won a ITF G5 singles title and took the doubles crown in an ITF G3 event in Brazil. During his senior year, he reached three ITF G1 semifinals.
The signing period for NCAA men’s tennis runs from Nov. 14,