The Illinois men’s tennis team will begin their first national tournament of the year Monday at the ITA Ralph Lauren Polo All-American Championships – but they will do it with only two players.

Head coach Brad Dancer decided to send only juniors Kevin Anderson and Ryan Rowe, the two highest-ranked Illini, to the All-American in Tulsa, Okla. Brandon Davis, Marc Spicijaric and Billy Heiser, who were going to enter the single-elimination qualifying draw for the event, will instead participate in the Nick Bollettieri Invitational next weekend in Bradenton, Fla.

“It was a decision about number of matches and class time,” Dancer said. “The guys we’re taking down to Bollettieri’s are going to get five matches in and only miss one day of class. If they’d qualified for the All-American, they could miss a whole week of school, maybe more, or they could have just been one and done.”

Anderson’s No. 17 national ranking means he will not have to worry about qualifying for the main singles draw, but Rowe will enter the weekend as the first alternate – meaning he will need another player to drop out in order to make it in.

“I think every year a couple people pull out at the last moment,” Rowe said. “Hopefully it works out and I’ll be able to get in there and play some good tennis.”

The All-American is the first leg of the International Tennis Association’s Collegiate Grand Slam, a series of national tournaments throughout the year. It is also the first national event since Anderson and Rowe won the NCAA doubles championship last spring, earning them the role of favorites in this year’s early tournaments. It will be a change for the pair from last year, when the since-graduated Ryler DeHeart garnered most of the team’s headlines as the No. 1 player in the nation.

But neither player would admit to feeling pressure to live up to their top seed, which will be made more difficult by the shortened match format the All-American employs for doubles matches.

“They’re really focused on their level of performance, and that’s what our program is about,” Dancer said. “Titles are an excellent by-product of being really good at what you do. They’ll go after a title, they’ll try to win it, and they know a team will have to play well to beat them. But they also know this is an eight-game pro set, and anything can happen in an eight-game pro set.”

In the singles draw, Anderson will also be trying to improve on his second-round finish at the All-American last year. He came into that event nursing an injury that limited his practice time, but still played well enough to advance.

“Last year was hard because I hadn’t played many matches coming in,” Anderson said. “This year I’m going in to win it. The main goal is always to get better, and let winning and losing take care of itself, but I have very high expectations of myself.”

Anderson and Rowe will be making their second trip to Tulsa in as many weeks, after each lost in the first round of qualifying at a Challenger event last weekend. But this will be collegiate competition, not professional, and Rowe said its timing could leave it open to surprising runs by the players in the middle of the draw.

“Summer’s a very developmental time for a lot of people,” he said. “So there will be guys coming out and doing better than people expect. I especially think Kevin is going to do really well, even though he’s only a top-20 seed. He’s going to go out there and show people what he’s made of, and hopefully I can do the same thing.”