Ohio State director of tennis Ty Tucker has welcomed Matej Vocel, Jake Van Emburgh and Reece Yakubov onto an already talented roster for the 2021-22 season.
Vocel played the last three seasons at Oklahoma State where he was a two-time All-Big 12 honoree in both singles and doubles. He was a first team singles honoree in 2019 and a unanimous selection in 2021. Also in 2019, he was named the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year, becoming just the seventh Cowboy in program history to earn the award. He took his game a step further in 2020 and was named an ITA All-American. He reached as high as No. 19 in the ITA singles rankings and was ranked No. 1 at one point in doubles during his Cowboy career.
The Prague, Czech Republic native was the No. 3 ranked junior player in the Czech Republic prior to heading to Oklahoma State and has also been ranked as the No. 20 male player in the country. His career-high ATP rankings are 641 in singles and 358 in doubles. Matej is the son of Stanislava and Jan Vocel.
Van Emburgh was the Big 12 Freshman of the Year in 2018 as he played the last four seasons at Oklahoma. He was also named the ITA Central Region Rookie of the Year that season after playing in every match for the Sooners and recording a 25-6 singles record. He earned All-Big 12 honors in both singles and doubles during his freshman campaign. As a sophomore, he went 17-9 and was named the ITA Central Region Player to Watch. During his Sooner career, he rose to as high as No. 47 in the ITA singles rankings and No. 13 in the doubles rankings.
A two-time Academic All-Big 12 honoree, Van Emburgh has tallied over 100 combined collegiate victories. He earned an ATP ranking of 1415 in 2020. Prior to his time in Norman, Van Emburgh was ranked as a top eight junior player in America. That came as no surprise as his father Greg is a former ATP touring pro who was ranked as high as No. 30 in the world. He was also a semifinalist at Wimbledon in 1990 and winner of seven ATP titles. Jake’s mother is Tracey Van Emburgh and his brother is Jenson, who is a Para Table Tennis player and ranked in the Top-10 in the world. Jenson will compete in Tokyo later this month.
Yakubov is a five-star recruit from St. Charles Prep in Columbus. He was ranked in the Top 40 nationally of the 2021 class and No. 5 in the Midwest. He is a four-time state qualifier and finished runner-up at the DI state tournament in 2018. In addition to being a two-time first team All-Ohio honoree and four-time All-League honoree on the tennis court, he also earned All-League honors four times as a member of the golf team. He helped St. Charles qualify for the state championship in 2019.
Yakubov is the son of Steven and Tracey Yakubov. He has two brothers, Evan and Connor, who both play collegiate golf. Evan is on the team at Indiana and Connor played at Emory University.
