Men's Tennis Loses Thriller at Furman

GREENVILLE, S.C. - The Georgia Southern Men's Tennis team was denied in a nail-biter in its Sunday afternoon battle at Furman. The Paladins used four tight singles wins to propel them into the win column with a 4-3 victory. The match is the Paladins' fifth win on the season and improves them to 2-2 in SoCon play. The match also marks the second consecutive 4-3 decision in the series, as the Eagles prevailed by a 4-3 score in last year's contest in Statesboro.

The Eagles (1-17, 0-7 SoCon) began the match with a bang by winning the doubles point in thrilling fashion. The No. 1 doubles team of Alain Garrido (Vigo, Spain) and Andrew Dromsky (Martinez, Ga.) continued their solid play and came up huge in the clutch by ousting Alex Christ and Joel Cook, 9-7, to grab the point for the Eagles. Freshmen Floridians Kyle Hoffman (Sarasota, Fla.) and Daniel Rush (Orange Park, Fla.) had given the Eagles the early lead in doubles play by engineering a 9-7 win at No. 2 doubles over Andrew Mellow and Tyler Droll. The Paladins leveled doubles action at 1-1 when Luke Synn and Nate Collins dethroned Albert Codina Sala (Manresa, Spain) and Sebastien Felt (Vienna, Austria) in a close battle at No. 3 doubles, 8-6.

Each of the six singles matches played between the squads was a barnburner. Unfortunately for the Eagles, they came out on the wrong end in four of them. The Paladins evened the match at 1-1 when Christ downed Hoffman at No. 2 singles, 6-3, 6-3. Marco Osorio (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) put the Eagles back in the lead when he won his second three-set match of the year over Ryan Miller at No. 6 singles, 6-2, 2-6, 6-1. Garrido hung tough with Mellow, the No. 110 ranked singles player in the country, before falling by a 6-4, 6-4 score, leveling the match at 2-2. The Paladins grabbed their first lead when Synn prevailed over Rush at No. 5 singles, 6-3, 6-4. Droll then came up big when he clinched the match victory for his squad with his win over Codina Sala at No. 4 singles, 6-4, 7-5. Not to be denied, Dromsky notched his team-leading fifth singles victory of the season when he rallied from a set down to win in a third-set tiebreaker over Cook at No. 3 singles, 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7). Four of his five victories have been three-set affairs.

"We played a great match today; our energy and fight were there the whole way through," said Head Coach Nick Zieziula. "We missed a few opportunities to close out leads, but overall we played a solid match. If we continue to fight like this, we are going to turn this season around."

The Eagles will look to rebound from the narrow defeat when they complete their two-match road trip at Wofford on Monday morning. First serve is set for 10 a.m. in Spartanburg.

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Category: Men's Tennis

Published on Sunday, 25 March 2012 15:12