After a weekend of play at the Wallach Invitational, a tournament marking the men's tennis team's last official competition before entering the winter offseason, the Jumbos put up a flurry of mixed results, which included a title in the C singles bracket, courtesy of freshman Garrett Schuman.
Junior Dan Landers found himself in the finals of the D singles bracket, and junior captain Bryan Wilner survived through to the semifinals of the C bracket before being knocked out.
It wasn't an overpowering style of play or a repertoire of tricky spins that allowed Schuman to win over the weekend at the Bates-hosted tourney. Instead, it was his brains and consistency that helped him to take home the C bracket title after winning five matches, including a trio of three-setters, over the course of the weekend.
"I played smart and was willing to sacrifice looking good in order to win the match," Schuman said.
Schuman got off to a rocky start, though, dropping his first five games against one of his former high school teammates, sophomore Alex Gumport from Amherst, in the first round. Still, the first year managed to collect himself and won 2-6, 6-3, 10-7.
"I kept telling myself, ‘Settle down, settle down, a new set is coming up,' and next thing I knew I was up a break and eventually won the match," Schuman said.
Once past the mental road bump of being down a set in the opening round, Schuman had to struggle past a physical obstacle as well, as he felt worn out and somewhat under the weather as the tournament wore on. Still, he pulled through to win his next three matches en route to the finals, in which he defeated sophomore Tony Sheng of Amherst 7-6 (8), 6-2. Schuman won all five tie breaks he found himself in during the tournament, including one during the first set of the final.
Wilner narrowly missed making it an all Tufts final in the C bracket of the competition, falling to Sheng in the semifinals. Wilner played through a knee injury, but it was hardly noticeable on day one of the tournament, when he won his first two matches in commanding fashion, winning 24 games while surrendering just six to his opponents.
The junior was less impressive on Sunday, however, as he succumbed 6-1, 6-1 to Sheng. Wilner admits that it wasn't just the injury that cost him the match, though.
"He was just a much better player than the other kids I faced in the tournament," Wilner said. "He had an all-around game that would be tough for me even if I was 100 percent."
Meanwhile, Landers found himself in the D bracket finals after defeating Bowdoin sophomore Michael Power in a grinding three set battle 6-4, 2-6, 10-7 in the quarters and trumping Skidmore freshman Max Bevan in a 6-1 6-3 romp in the semis. But Landers faltered against Bevan's teammate in the finals, losing to freshman Luke Granger 6-1, 7-6 (5).
The rest of the Tufts singles competitors, while failing to make it out of the first round, did put up a fight, as most managed to split their first two sets against their respective opponents.
Instead of playing a full third set at Wallach, the tournament decided to have super-tiebreakers that award the third set and the match to the first player to notch 10 points (or however many necessary to win by two), which some consider akin to a coin flip that shouldn't define the outcome of a match.
"That's not how you play tennis," Wilner said. "[The Tufts players] just got unlucky having to play a tiebreak. It was, however, nice to know that they were playing well enough to be up there with the top-tier talent."
"There's nothing to worry about," coach Doug Eng said. "They still split sets and even had several match points. They'll do fine in the spring."
On the doubles side, Landers and sophomore Paul Kohnstamm managed to reach the quarterfinals of the A bracket after one victory, while the remainder of the Tufts doubles teams floundered in the early rounds. Still, the squad expects better play all around once the spring portion of the season kicks off. Once more, two of the team's up-and-coming doubles talents, freshmen Sam Laber and Kai Victoria, were unable to attend the tournament due to sickness and other personal reasons. Eng stressed the importance of health for the upcoming spring season.
"We will be pushing an extra 10 percent in the spring season, and we should have a good season if we can stay healthy," he said. "The NESCAC's the best it's ever been this year, but in turn our team is the deepest it's ever been, so it should be interesting to see how it plays out."
