Men's tennis strings together four wins

Author: Tianze Ma

After a long off-season of training, the Middlebury men's tennis team finally started another long, yet promising season on March 8. The Panthers kicked off the season with four overwhelming victories, defeating Brandeis, Union, NYU and Bates - all while dropping only one set total.

Playing in Nelson Arena, the Panthers had little trouble early in the weekend, as they picked up 9-0 wins over Brandeis and Union on Saturday. On Sunday morning, NYU came to play, but ended up going home after a shortened 6-0 defeat.

That afternoon, the Panthers defeated Bates, the weekend's biggest rival, in all six singles and three doubles matches.

Rich Bonfiglio '11, Andrew Lee '10, Peter Odell '10 and Andrew Peters '11 each earned 3-0 marks over the weekend for the Panthers. Eliot Jia '10, Filip Marinkovic '08, Chris Mason '10, Jeronimo Riefkohl '11 and Andrew Thomson '10 also went 3-0.

The only set lost by Middlebury over the course of the weekend was in the number-one singles match versus NYU's Mikhail Gurevich.

"He came out very strong in the first set and was hitting winners from everywhere," said Jia, Middlebury's number-one player. "In the second and third sets I was able to stick with him better and eventually start coming into net and finishing points. It was good to sneak out a three-set win."

In the match with Bates' top doubles team, Marinkovic and Thompson easily triumphed 8-1 over Amrit Rupasinghe - Sri Lanka's national champion and member of its Davis Cup team - and Ben Stein.

On March 22, the Panthers will head to California for its annual spring break trip.