Last season, the Washington men’s tennis team struggled in the doubles’ arena.
So much so that UW head coach Matt Anger pointed out the lack of doubles’ consistency on the same day the UW’s 2011 season ended. This weekend, the Huskies proved they are a long way from last year’s teams.
At the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Northwest Regionals, three UW doubles pairs — sophomore Emmett Egger and junior Max Manthou, seniors Kyle McMorrow and Marton Bots, and sophomores Jeff Hawke and Viktor Farkas — are still alive in the main draw after advancing to the quarterfinals, which take place today at 9 a.m., in Moraga, Calif.
“We’ve just been trying to carry on what we’ve been working on in practice out there in matches,” Anger said of his team’s doubles improvement. “It’s a big commitment and it’s going to keep getting tougher with every round. The doubles are definitely making progress though.”
Egger and Manthou took down Stanford’s Daniel Ho and Jamin Ball, 9-7 in the round of 16. McMorrow and Bots had an easy 8-2 win over San Francisco’s Thai Tu and Will Schumacher, while Hawke and Farkas knocked off Santa Clara’s second-seeded tandem of Ilya Osintsev and John Lamble, 8-5, to punch their tickets to the quarterfinals.
Many of the UW’s doubles pairs this weekend are new, with Egger and Manthou, and Hawke and Farkas playing their first matches together. Bots and McMorrow played four matches together last season but had a 1-3 record. Although the new pairings are far from finalized, mixing up the teams early in the season helps build the team’s camaraderie.
“We have a good chemistry between the guys which makes for good doubles,” Anger said. “Each guy is working hard to make things with their partner, no matter who it is.”
Despite success on the doubles’ front, the UW struggled in singles, with no Huskies advancing to the quarterfinals and only Egger making it to the round of 16 where he fell to Stanford’s John Morrissey Sunday, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.
Seniors McMorrow and Bots struggled in singles, falling in the third round in straight sets. McMorrow, the tournament’s No. 1 seed in singles, fell to Stanford’s Nolan Paige, 6-4, 7-6 (4), while Bots was upset by Pacific’s Alex Golding, 6-3, 6-4.
The only Husky remaining in the singles bracket is sophomore Nicholas Kamisar, who advanced to the fourth round of the consolation draw with a win 6-0, 6-1 over Eastern Washington’s Eduardo Bringold. Kamisar will play his fourth round consolation match today at 11 a.m.
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