The No. 7 ranked Emory men's tennis team (7-2) got its spring break trip underway this afternoon, taking on the No. 21 ranked RPI Engineers. The Eagles flocked south to Orlando, Florida for their break and started with a neutral site match against the Engineers. Despite sweeping the doubles matches, RPI stormed back to take four singles matches and snap the Eagles' five-match winning streak.
Emory got things started strong with doubles play, with junior
Dean Kamenev and freshman
Ajay Kartik continuing to dominate in the top doubles spot for the Eagles. The duo won their match, 6-4, to extend their winning streak to three straight. Sophomore
Christian Liew and freshman
Ruilin Feng won their fourth straight as well on court two, winning by a score of 6-3. Graduate Students
Efe Comu and
Charley Force snapped their two-match losing streak with a 6-3 win on court three, completing the sweep for the Eagles.
Emory took a 1-0 lead into singles play, needing to take three of the six matches to secure a win.
Feng kept his rookie campaign rolling right along, winning in straight sets on court two (6-5, 6-4). The win brings Feng's overall record to 10-1, and 7-0 in dual matches. The win also marks his ninth straight individual singles win. Kamenev carried over some momentum from his last match as well, winning in three sets (6-1, 1-6, 6-3) on court three.
Those would be the only singles matches the Eagles won, though, as RPI stormed back for a win. Comu competed in the top spot for Emory once again and despite taking his first set, his opponent went on to take the final two sets both by a score of 7-5 to steal a victory. Comu is now 2-4 in the No. 1 singles spot this season. His doubles partner, Force, suffered a similar fate on court five, narrowly dropping a tiebreaker in the third and final set. Force's final line came to (6-7, 6-2, 6(5)-7).
Liew suffered his second loss of dual match season, dropping his match on court three in straight sets (1-6, 3-6). Junior
John Lasanajak rounded out the day for Emory, dropping his match in straight sets on court six (5-7, 3-6).
The loss drops Emory's dual match record to 7-2 this season. Emory will get a chance to bounce back on Monday at 3:30 PM when they take on UAA-foe #5 Case Western Reserve. The match will also take place in Orlando.
