SE Tennessee News

The Lee University men's tennis team won five of the six singles matches to defeat Carson-Newman University in a non-conference meeting Tuesday afternoon at the DeVos Tennis Center. The Flames improved to 7-0 and the Eagles fell to 2-5 in a battle of teams receiving votes in the February 17 ITA Collegiate Tennis Rankings.

Ids Waterbolk and Gjorgji Jankulovski opened doubles competition with a 6-2 win over Mike and Quinn Groenendijk. Nico Ramirez and Francisco Faria evened the doubles score after edging Marc Janse and Rintaro Oka 6-4 at No. 1 doubles. The Eagles secured the doubles point following a 6-2 win by Lars Hordijk and Marnix Van Dalen over Wihan Van Der Merwe and Drew Johnston.

Jordi Dasi evened the team score with a 6-1, 6-4 defeat of Jankulovski at No. 3 singles. Ramirez won the first and third sets against Van Dalen at No. 1 singles to give the Flames their first lead of the match. Ramirez won the first set 6-1, lost the second 6-3 and finished with a third-set score of 6-2.

Janse tied the match at 2-2 with a three-set win over Faria. Janse won the opening set 6-2 and Faria forced a third set after doubling Janse 6-3 in the second. Janse outlasted Faria in the third set with a 7-5 tiebreaker to win the third set 7-6.

Quinn Groenendijk won both sets against Waterbolk 6-2 to put the Flames back ahead and one point away from winning. Van Der Merwe defeated Oka in three sets to clinch the team victory. Van Der Merwe won the opening set 7-6 with a 7-1 tiebreaker. Oka posted a 6-4 win in the second set and Van Der Merwe completed the No. 4 singles win with a 6-2 mark in the third set.

Mike Groenendijk supplied the final team score with a come-from-behind three-set win over Javier Crespo Sanchez. The competitors split the first two sets by identical 6-2 scores. Groenendijk won the superset tiebreaker 10-3 to complete the comeback.

"We dug ourselves a bit of a hole with doubles, but it was pleasing to see our guys show some fight and pull through in the end," said Lee head coach Patric Hynes. "Full credit to Carson-Newman, they battled us hard." 

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