Armstrong Men's Tennis Inks Two For 2012-13

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Armstrong Atlantic State University head men's tennis coach Simon Earnshaw announced the signing of Estonian native Jaan Kononov and Spanish native Pablo Gor-Costales to National Letters of Intent to play for the Pirates. Both players will be enrolling at Armstrong for the upcoming 2012 fall semester.

Jaan Kononov is a native of Tallinn, Estonia, where he has been the top ranked junior player and ranked as high as No. 3 overall in the Men’s rankings in his native country. Kononov holds career wins over Vladimir Ivanov (ranked #501 in ATP) and the current #7 ITF world ranked junior Nikola Milojevic. He has had a high ITF World Junior ranking of 289 and, in 2010, won the Grade 4 ITF Twiga Cup Junior tournament in both singles and doubles. Kononov has also reached the singles finals in 2 other ITF junior events and doubles final on 3 further occasions. He will be the third Estonian to play for the Pirates.

Pablo Gor-Costales, meanwhile, hails from Tarragona, Spain, and continues Armstrong’s very successful line of Spanish players in recent years. Gor-Costales has won several junior and senior provincial championships and advanced as far as the singles quarterfinals and doubles semifinals at the 2011 Spanish National Junior Championships. He also reached the singles semifinals of the ITF C.T. Benicarlo International Junior event in 2011. Gor-Costales has been ranked as high as #5 in juniors in Spain and #65 in the Spanish Men’s Senior rankings. Pablo has considerable experience playing tough matches during his young career against highly-ranked Spanish players such as Oscar Sabate, Gerard Granollers and Albert Ramos.

"I am extremely happy with this year’s recrutiing class, both Jaan and Pablo are very experienced players who’ll be able to come in and make an impact immediately," coach Earnshaw said, "They are well aware of our process and eager to get started. I am confident both will be great assets moving forward as we continue to challenge for NCAA Championships."

Armstrong men's tennis is coming off an undefeated 30-0 NCAA Championship campaign in 2011-12. They return five of seven players including ITA All-Star Team member Georgi Rumenov. The team will kickoff its 2012 Fall campaign in Athens on September 7-10 at the Southern Intercollegiate Championships.