The Georgia Tech men’s tennis team fared well in the first day of competition at the University of South Carolina Fall Invitational. Five Yellow Jacket players won their first-round mathes, and three advanced to the quarterfinals.
Senior Romain Coirault defeated Rice’s Vuk Rajevac, 6-4, 6-4, in the first round and Virginia Tech’s Davor Dupljak, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3, in the second round of Flight A1.
Tech freshman Joao Menano also earned two victories with wins over South Carolina Spartanburg’s Jason Staiger(6-2, 6-1) and Clemson’s Damiisa Robinson (7-5, 6-1) in Flight B1.
Fellow rookie Amit Taggar defeated NC State’s Jagjeet Sandhu, 1-6, 6-2, 6-2, in Flight B1 after receiving a first-round bye.
Freshman Alex Novinkov topped Brown’s Chris Drake, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3, in A1 Singles before falling to Furman’s Lee Nickell, 6-3, 6-0.
Sophomore Roger Anderson, last year’s ACC Rookie of the Year, won his first-round match, defeating UNC Greensboro’s Nigel Mitten, 7-5, 6-3, but defaulted his second-round match.
Sophomore Travis Iams lost his first-round match, 3-6, 1-6, to Chris Wolfe of Brown and fell to Ryan Ariko of William & Mary, 3-6, 4-6, in a consolation match.
Tech’s doubles teams also had a strong showing at the South Carolina Invitational. Anderson and Taggar defeated a Winthrop doubles team, 8-1, in Flight A2 doubles. Iams and Novinkov defeated a UNCG duo, 9-8, in Flight B1. Coirault and Menano were upended in Flight A1 by Clemson, 9-8.
The South Carolina Fall Invitational concludes on Sunday in Columbia, S.C.
