Eagles Lose in Battle with Phoenix
3/19/2012 4:22:00 PM | Men's Tennis
STATESBORO, Ga. - The Georgia Southern Men's Tennis team was unable to snap out of its funk in the Monday afternoon match at Hanner Tennis Complex. The Eagles fell in a dual with the Elon Phoenix, 6-1. The Phoenix, reigning regular season co-champions of the SoCon, improved their conference record to 4-1 with the victory.
The Eagles (1-15, 0-5 SoCon) fell behind early in the match when they failed to capture the doubles point. The Phoenix struck first in doubles play when Dan Sablik and Christopher Geaslen broke serve early and held off a late rally from Kyle Hoffman (Sarasota, Fla.) and Sebastien Felt (Vienna, Austria) at No. 3 doubles. Alain Garrido (Vigo, Spain) and Andrew Dromsky (Martinez, Ga.) traded holds the entire match with Cameron Silverman and Eric Turner before finally dropping serve and the match at No. 1 doubles, 8-6. The loss clinched the doubles point for the Phoenix and marked only the second loss in six matches for the Eagle duo. Marco Osorio (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) and Daniel Rush (Sarasota, Fla.), like Hoffman and Felt, lost serve early and attempted to rally but fell at No. 2 doubles to Stefan Fortmann and Jordan Kaufman, 8-2.
The good fortunes of the Phoenix in doubles carried over into singles play. The Phoenix denied the Eagles in three first-set tiebreakers that set the tone for the remainder of the match. The Eagles had held leads in each of those three sets. Fortmann prevailed over Hoffman at No. 2 singles, while Silverman bested Garrido at No. 1 singles to give Elon a 3-0 lead. The match-clincher for the Phoenix came when Kaufman ousted Rush at No. 4 singles, 7-6 (7-3), 6-0. Turner came back from down a break in the first set to defeat Dromsky, 7-6 (7-3), 6-0. Carlos Arboleda added a tight 6-2, 6-3 win over Osorio to give the Phoenix their total of six points on the afternoon. Felt rallied from dropping the first set to give the Eagles their lone point of the day in a third-set match tiebreak win over Geaslen, 6-7 (4-7), 6-2, 10-5.
The Eagles will complete their two-match homestand and play their second-to-last home match of the season when they welcome in Appalachian State on Friday afternoon. Play is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. at Hanner Tennis Complex.
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