Top Bruin Drops Out

The 105th Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament hasn’t even started, and already, the draws are jumbled.

UCLA senior Luben Pampoulov is ranked No. 6 nationally by the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. and was seeded second for the Pacific 10 Conference championships that take place concurrently with the Ojai event today through Sunday at Libbey Park. But the senior left-hander from Austria pulled out of the 32-player draw Tuesday because of illness -- he has suffered from fever the last few days and his temperature reached 102 on Tuesday, according to UCLA Coach Billy Martin.

He had perhaps the best chance among area players to win the tournament’s marquee event. With Pampoulov out, Stanford senior Sam Warburg remains top-seeded, but UCLA’s Philipp Gruendler, formerly the top-seeded player in the second-tier Pac-10 invitational bracket, moves into the main draw, and the rest of each bracket will change accordingly.

USC freshman Nicole Leimbach, ranked ninth nationally, is seeded second in the Pac-10 women’s main draw behind Cal freshman Suzi Babos.

Thousand Oaks High junior Sam Querrey, winner of the boys’ 18 singles title at the Easter Bowl Spring National Championships last weekend and the best high school player in the area, won the tournament’s CIF Interscholastic division title last season but will not play in it this year.

Instead, Querrey is competing in the men’s Open division, which includes top-seeded Cecil Mamiit, a struggling ATP tour pro who won the NCAA singles title while at USC in 1996 and once was ranked as high as No. 72 in the world.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do,” Querrey said of competing in the only division that offers prize money, with $2,000 going to the men’s singles winner.

Mamiit is at No. 243 in tour entry-system singles rankings.