Rice University
Lamar
No. 23 Men's Tennis Tops Lamar in Home Opener
2/6/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Feb. 6, 2008
HOUSTON - The No. 23 Rice men's tennis team eased past Lamar with a 6-1 victory in its home opener Wednesday afternoon at the Rice Recreation Courts.
"We found a way to win after not playing our best tennis," head coach Ron Smarr said. "We'll have to regroup and pick it up if we want to be successful against two quality programs (Arizona and Miami) this weekend."
Rice (3-1) fired out to a 1-0 lead by sweeping all three doubles matches. The Owls have won the doubles point in their last three matches.
Filip Zivojinovic and Chong Wang dominated Allan Gomes and Diego Snyder with an 8-2 win at the No. 2 spot.
A few moments later, Bruno Rosa and Tobias Scheil emerged with an 8-3 victory against Mario Janjic and David Wanja in the No. 3 hole.
Christoph Müller and Ralph Knupfer completed the sweep and came through with an 8-4 triumph over Andres Medina and Filip Kanczula at the No. 1 position.
The Owls continued to grind in singles play. Wang pushed Rice ahead 2-0 after making quick work of Snyder 6-1, 6-0 in the No. 3 slot.
Dennis Polyakov made it 3-0 taking down Nils Iwdal 6-3, 6-4 at No. 5 before Müller disposed of Kanczula 6-3, 6-2 at the top of the lineup to clinch the match for the Owls.
Hoony Shin lost a hard-fought 6-4, 6-4 decision to Medina at No. 6 to put Lamar (1-4) on the board at 4-1.
Schiel swung the momentum back to the Owls with a 7-6 (4), 6-4 win against Gomes in the No. 4 spot.
All eyes turned to Court 2 where Rosa responded by reeling off six of seven games in the second set after falling 6-4 in the opening frame.
Facing a match-point down 5-4 in the third set, Rosa ripped a blistering forehand winner to get the game to deuce.
After the two players exchanged holds, Rosa dug his way out of a 0-30 hole in his next service game to scrap his way into a tiebreaker. The Brazilian made the critical plays in the breaker to win 7-4 and to stay undefeated in singles play.
Rice is back in action with a pair of home matches this weekend. The Owls square off against Arizona Friday at 1:30pm before taking on No. 24 Miami Sunday at 11am. Admission is free for both matches at Jake Hess Stadium.
Players Mentioned
