The Brown men’s tennis team (13-6, 0-0 Ivy) had a roller-coaster of a day during a home doubleheader this past Sunday, first losing 4-3 a nail-biter game against St. John’s (13-2, 3-0 Big East) before facing Sacred Heart (1-10, 0-2 MAAC).
Despite falling inches short from victory against the Red Storm, Bruno’s flawless 7-0 performance against Sacred Heart later in the afternoon moved the Bears to No. 5 in the Ivy League as they move into conference play later this month. Sunday’s matchups followed a 4-0 victory over Temple at home on Friday.
“We’d feel a little bit better had it been a 3-0 weekend as opposed to a 2-1 weekend,” Head Coach Mike Fried ’91 told The Herald. “At the same time, I think that everybody feels the work (is) paying off.”
In Bruno’s contest against St. John’s, the doubles matches would prove to be the swing factor, as the teams evenly split the singles matches. Brown lost several matches by small margins over the course of the fierce matchup, with each point carrying the potential difference between victory or defeat.
Though Noah Hernandez ’26 and Zander Bravo ’26 opened Bruno’s doubles play with a narrow loss, the seniors showed they were far from outmatched. In a thrilling deciding point at 40-40 during the third game, the Bears sent their opponents running up and down the court before sealing the game with a forehand smash.
Later on, during one of the Red Storm’s services in the ninth game, Hernandez accurately tracked his opponent’s second serve and leapt up for a forehand to win the point.
Bruno gave up a service break soon after, which cost the match for the two seniors by a final score of 6-4.
Bravo acknowledged he and Hernandez let several crucial volleys and services slip away. But, he told the Herald, “this by no means was a bad match.”
Ivan Sodan ’27 and Lukas Phimvongsa ’28 tasted Bruno’s lone doubles victory with a crushing 6-1 victory, while the duo of Cole Oberg ’29 and Elliot Wasserman ’29 lost 6-2. St. John’s was awarded the double point as the singles matches commenced with both teams desperately vying for the overall victory.
Singles play similarly came down to the wire in both the individual and team scores. Sodan pushed St. John’s Radomir Tomic to three sets in the first singles match before losing by a single game in the final set.
In a thrilling tiebreaker match point, the two sent each other flying across the entire court in an attempt to gain an edge. With nearly every set of eyes in the vicinity glued to the contest, Tomic rushed toward the net and countered Sodan’s drop shot with a strong cross-court forehand to win the match.
Refusing to let St. John’s pick up further momentum, Robert Yang ’29 and Wasserman showed off their potential with clean straight-set wins in their singles matches.
Yang demonstrated patience and consistency in his dominant performance against St. John’s Armando Sotelo, outlasting his opponent in long rallies with accurate placement and swift footwork. The first-year maintained a comfortable winning margin throughout the match, only dropping three total games to win 6-2 and 6-1.
Facing a St. John’s set point in the first set, Wasserman did not falter despite the jitter-inducing scoreboard. Wasserman brought his powerful forehand across the court to snatch the set out of the Red Storm’s hands and win the tiebreak game –– a crucial moment in his match’s victory.
Phimvongsa added in his own singles victory, and with the overall team scores now drawn at 3-3, Bravo took the court for his singles match against St. John’s Venedikt Tsirikidze to decide the fate of the afternoon.
Unfortunately for Bruno, it was Tsirikidze who eked out the victory to award his team the overall contest win. Though Bravo got tantalizingly close to winning the first set of the match, he dropped a 7-6 tiebreaker before falling in the next set 6-3.
“I gave absolutely everything I had; I played very well,” Bravo said about his performance. “My opponent was a very good player.”
A few short hours after laying it all on the court against St. John’s, the Bears showcased their ability to bounce back and shut out an overwhelmed Sacred Heart –– not losing a single match for a 7-0 sweep.
Brown relied on their experience in doubleheaders and did not let fatigue affect the score against Sacred Heart.
“It’s exhausting, but there’s no place we’d rather be, of course, than on the court,” Bravo said, reflecting on a season peppered with back-to-back matchups.
The Bears will be back in action against Bryant (3-13, 0-0 Big South) at home on Saturday morning.
“We trained our lives for this, and this is what we work for,” Bravo said. “So the more matches, the better.”
Chiupong Huang is a senior staff writer covering sports.
