Binghamton University’s men’s tennis team followed up a strong showing at their last tournament, Brown Invitational, with a decent effort at the Columbia Classic.
The event, which took place at the Dick Savitt Tennis Center in Manhattan, featured schools familiar to the Bearcats’ fall schedule, such as Princeton, Cornell, St. John’s, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and host Columbia. The University of Texas at Arlington, Monmouth, Marist, Sacred Heart and Fairleigh Dickinson University rounded out the group.
Binghamton head coach Adam Cohen took only three players with him to the event — Moshe Levy, Evan Algier and Andreas Danielsson. Star Arnav Jain had originally planned on going to the event, though Cohen decided to have him sit this one out.
Algier was especially impressive this weekend, continuing his recent strong play. The sophomore went 2-1 in singles play. He began the tournament by defeating Tim Wu of Harvard, 6-4, 6-3, in a game for which he was randomly chosen. Algier proceeded to take down Jordan Talbot of St. John’s, 6-2, 6-4, before dropping his final match of the tournament to Pavel Cerny of St. John’s, 6-3, 6-3.
Cohen had high praise for Algier, who was competing in the C singles flight.
“Evan is playing well,” Cohen said. “He has won four out of his last five matches and the more you win, the more confidence you gain, and you can see that in his play.”
Unfortunately, Algier did not see quite the same success in doubles play, losing his only match to Cornell’s Jonathan Jaklitsch and Jonathan Fife, 8-4 — scoring is generally different for doubles in tournaments because, for the sake of saving time, they play what are called “super sets.” Because Binghamton brought an odd number of players to Columbia, Tim Wu of Harvard was Algier’s doubles partner for the match.
Junior Moshe Levy went 1-2 in the A singles flight, going up against opponents that Cohen described as being “pretty tough.” After losing his first match, 6-3, 6-2, to Ekin Sezgen of Columbia, Moshe rebounded, downing Rajeev Deb-Sen of Columbia 4-6, 6-0, 1-0(6). Moshe proceeded to lose his next match to Jeremy Feldman of Cornell 6-3, 4-6, 1-0(7) — an opponent that Cohen called “one of Cornell’s top three guys.”
“Moshe hit the ball well. His ball striking was pretty good this weekend,” Cohen said. “He lost to a good player from Columbia in the first round and the match score really didn’t indicate the closeness of the match.”
The third player that competed for the Bearcats at Columbia was sophomore Andreas Danielsson, who unfortunately dropped both of his matches at the event. Although both matches were relatively close, he was not able to top Alex Vasin of Penn, who beat Danielsson 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, or Dmitry Bury, also of Penn, 6-0, 3-6, 1-0(7).
The Bearcats have a couple of weeks off before their next competition: the Cornell Fall Indoor Invitational, being held the weekend of Oct. 31.