Men’s tennis has displayed their talents over the past two weeks as the team played Sunday at the Wallach Invitational at Bates College and the previous Sunday at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association New England Regional tournament at Williams College. 

Led by captain Michael Arguello ’17, the team demonstrated their potential to succeed despite the numerous skilled teams they had to face at both tournaments. At the Wallach Invitational, Harshil Dwivedi ’19 demonstrated his skill, winning the D singles final and bringing home the trophy. 

Overall, the past two weeks have been quite promising for the Judges as both the new faces and long-time veterans of the group are on top of their game.

At the Wallach Invitational, Brandeis was able to perform well in several of the competitions. For A doubles, Tyler Ng ’19 and David Aizenberg ’20 played played well, winning three rounds first against Skidmore College (8-6), Bates (8-6) and finally Bowdoin College (9-8) before falling to Colby College in the championship round.

 In B singles, Ng also performed admirably. He crushed his first round opponent, freshman William Frigerio of Trinity College, in two sets (6-1, 6-0). Ng continued on to beat freshman Nate Neimiec in two games as well (6-2, 6-3) before losing once again in the semifinal round to Skidmore. 

To highlight the day, Dwivedi impressively managed to take home hardware in the singles D championship win.

It was a great overall performance on Sunday, as Brandeis made a significant contribution to nearly every tournament event. There was some room for improvement, but the players and coaches know what they need to work on, and there is still time before the season begins for the team to develop their hard skills.

The previous week at the Williams hosted ITA tournament, Arguello had a dominating performance, beating four seeded players and one unseeded player before he finished second in singles for the competition. He started off the day strong, beating fifth seeded Massachusetts Institute of Technology freshman Alex Cauneac, and he did not look back once. He cruised past Bowdoin junior Gil Roddy and freshman William De Quant of Middlebury College, as well as Amherst freshman Oscar Burney. 

In the quarterfinals versus Colby, Arguello was tied 5-5 in the first set but Arguello suddenly heated up as he scored 8 in a row to win the first set, 7-5 and the second 6-0. Arguello  made it all the way to the final round of the tournament. The talented  Middleburry sophomore Lubomir Cuba, who had yet to lose a single set the entire tournament, was waiting for Arguello in the finals. Unfortunately, Cuba continued his success as Arguello lost two quick sets to the champion, 6-2, 6-2. Despite a disappointing final round, both Arguello and head coach Ben Lamanna were pleased by the outcome of the weekend in the singles bracket.

 Unfortunately, the Judges’ doubles play was not as dominant as their singles as both teams that competed were knocked out very early on. Jackson Kogan ’19 and Arguello did not make it past the first round, losing closely 9-8 (7-5) to Wesleyan. Ng and Aizenberg also fell short in their first round of play to Middlebury. After Arguello’s dominance in singles, it was clear that doubles play would be crucial to work on for the team’s future success going forward.

If doubles can really continue to work hard and develop their team play and singles can keep up their dominance, it should be an exciting season for the Judges.