International ODU blitzes M. Tennis

With a blistering snow storm outside, a team that fields players from the temperate countries of South Africa, Brazil, and India managed to stifle the Penn men's tennis team Sunday. No. 68 Old Dominion handed the Quakers their second straight shutout, as Penn also fell to No. 52 Virginia last week. The Monarchs (5-3) garnered the 7-0 victory over Penn (3-2), a day after falling to Princeton 6-1. Lost opportunities plagued Penn, as the Quakers posted early leads in many of the matches. "Everybody seemed to have an opportunity, even more so than last week," Penn senior co-captain Ryan Harwood said. "It shows that we're coming out with a lot of fire, we're all going up early, we just have to learn how to close out these matches." In doubles play, Harwood and sophomore Anthony Pu matched up with the fourth- ranked duo in the country, Romanian Zoltan Csanadi and South African Izak van der Merwe. The Penn team went up 7-2 only to go on to lose the match 9-8 after a tie break. "I think we came out very tough in the beginning and we maintained a very high level throughout the match," Pu said. "It's just that the hardest part of tennis is closing out the match and that's where we messed up." In second-seeded doubles, the Penn pair of sophomores Justin Lavner and Todd Lecher also mounted an early lead, but went on to drop the match 8-4 to the ODU team of Indian Salman Mohammed and Swede Niklas Oskarsson. The Monarchs swept doubles play as Romanian Calin Milos and Swede Patrik Binkowski topped Penn's sophomore David Lynn and freshman Jimmy Fairbanks 8-6. In singles play, the theme of lost opportunities continued for the Quakers. Penn's top three seeded players all won the first set of their matches, only to fall in the decisive third set. In the first seeded match up, Harwood won the first set and was up 2-0 on Csanadi in the second. The senior went on to lose the match, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. "For the most part, he picked up his game and I didn't pick it up with him unfortunately," Harwood said. Lynn met a similar fate after winning the first set 7-5. He dropped the next two sets to van der Merwe with the final tally standing at 5-7, 6-3, 6-4. Senior co-captain Andy Kolker fell to Milos 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 after rallying to win the first set. ODU's Mohammed defeated Penn junior Alex Fritz 6-4, 6-3. Binkowski rolled by sophomore Craig Rubin 6-0, 6-2. Brazilian Adriano Mello outlasted Lecher 7-5, 6-3. "It was a frustrating match where we had a lot of close matches," Kolker said. "Right now we're just close, but we're not there and we have to get over the hump as a team."

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