It has been a tough start to the season for Fordham Men’s Tennis, going 1-7 over their first eight contests. But this past weekend, they got back on the winning side with a victory over Wagner College.
Fordham began the day sweeping the doubles competitions and earning the point. Senior Giorgio Soemarno and graduate student Nick Muller won the first match over Wagner’s Rodrigo Perez and Filippo Tonnicchi, 6-3. In the second match, Fordham found themselves in a much tighter contest. Sophomore Dhillon Virdee-Oakley and senior Nicholas Kanazirev outlasted Sebastian Dobson and Kunch Moolchandani in a 7-5 victory. The Rams completed the doubles sweep with the sophomore duo of John Mascone and Stefan Stojanovic defeating Wagner’s Aryan Gupta and Lucas Darling in convincing fashion, 6-2.
Wagner got on the board with an opening singles match win to tie the score at 1-1 before Fordham continued to dominate for the rest of the day.
In the first single match of the day, Perez outdueled Mueller in a long three-set battle that saw two sets go to tiebreakers. Perez narrowly won the first set by a score of 7-6. Mueller fought back in the second set to tie the match up at one with a 6-2 victory. The third and final set went an incredible 24 games to decide who would win the match. In the end, Perez prevailed with a 13-11 victory to take the first singles match and tie the score up at 1-1 before the second singles match of the day.
From then on, the Rams took control of the contest, not only winning every match, but also winning every set..
Soemarno drew Dobson in the second singles match of the day and took care of business. In the first set, he won 6-3 before finishing off the day with a 6-2 second-set victory to claim the second singles point and put Fordham up 2-1.
It only got easier for Fordham after that. In the third singles contest, Kanazirev matched up against Darling. Kanazirev made quick work of him, winning first 6-2, followed by an even easier 6-1 win.
In the fourth singles match, Fordham continued their dominance, sending Virdee-Oakley to face Moolchandani. Virdee-Oakley had the easiest work of the day, narrowly sweeping the match in consecutive sets. He won the first 6-0 before finishing off with a 6-1 victory.
The final two matches of the day ended in Wagner withdrawals as they did not have enough players to compete.
With the 6-1 victory, Fordham improved to 2-7 on the season. Over the break, they will venture down to Orlando, Fla., to face Union College and DePauw University next weekend before returning home for a matchup against Sacred Heart University on March 28.
