The men’s tennis team made an impressive showing last weekend at the Penn Invitational, with records of 12-5 in singles and 7-2 in doubles and two players going undefeated.
Brown played a doubleheader Friday against Lehigh University and the University at Buffalo before facing host Penn Saturday. Justin To ’15.5 and Eli Whittle ’17 both went undefeated in the tournament, while Will Spector ’15, Ivan Kravtchenko ’16 and co-captains Soufiane Azargui ’14 and David Neff ’14 all picked up multiple wins to help carry Bruno to a strong finish.
The team started off the tournament with a convincing win over the Mountain Hawks Friday morning. Bruno swept all nine matches — singles and doubles — and only lost two of 17 sets. Greg Garcia ’17 had a particularly notable performance for the day, winning his doubles match with partner To before battling back from a one set deficit to win his singles match in three sets.
“After falling behind in the first set, I started mixing things up in the second. I took some advice from my coach and managed to take the second set,” Garcia said. “Then in the third set (opponent Jeremy Kochman) picked his game up a lot, but I managed to hold him off for the win.”
Coming off their victory over Lehigh, the Bears stumbled against the Bulls later Friday. Bruno lost two of the three doubles matchups, with Garcia and To the only pair to salvage a win. Buffalo then took four of the six singles matches. Spector and Whittle both managed to pick up wins for Bruno.
“Guys seemed a little bit worn out after the Lehigh match, but we definitely took something from it,” Azargui said.
“We tried to focus on the positives from our game against Buffalo and looked to build on them,” To said.
Saturday morning, Brown had an opportunity to rebound from its loss with a match against Ivy League rival Penn.
“We were all super tired, but we knew we had to rally for our matchup with Penn,” To said.
The team won eight of nine matches against the Quakers, including all three of the doubles matches.
“I can already see that the level of play will be intense when league play starts in the spring,” Garcia said.
“We came out with a lot more energy — guys were cheering for one another — and we really got into the match,” Azargui said.
The team will play at home for the first time in almost a month when it hosts the Brown Invitational in Memory of Margaux Powers next weekend.
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