The No. 1 ranked Emory men's tennis team (8-1) kicked off its road-trip on Thursday afternoon, with a dual match against the No. 16 ranked Amherst Mammoths. The match against the Mammoths was the first of two games Emory will play at Trinity University's Butch Newman Tennis Center. Despite splitting the singles matches with the Mammoths, winning two out of the three doubles points propelled Emory to a 5-4 win on the neutral site.
Freshman Christian Liew's strong rookie season continued Thursday, winning both his singles and doubles matches. His singles record, playing primarily out of the No. 4 and 5 position, comes to 8-1 on the year while his doubles record improves to 7-2, all coming on court three. Sophomore Dean Kamenev and senior Nolan Shah's continued their dominant stretch of doubles play on Thursday, extending their winning streak to eight on court two.
Seniors Ryan Glanville and Brandon Cohen's five-match winning streak on court one came to a halt on Thursday, narrowly falling in a tiebreaker, 7-8 (7-5). Shah and Kamenev's match came down to the wire as well. The tandem was on the right side of this one, though, winning the match, 8-7. Senior Samuel Dean and Liew took court three and won their match in convincing fashion by a score of 8-4.
Emory went into the singles portion of the day with a 2-1 lead over the Mammoths.
The Mammoths took the matches on courts one and two, with Kamenev falling in the top singles position, 3-6 and 5-7, and Shah dropping his match on court two, losing both sets by a score of 2-6. Amherst also took the match in the No. 5 position, with junior Emilio Van Cotthem falling in three sets (6-7, 6-3, 3-6).
However, the Eagles bent but did not break, taking the remaining three singles matches. Glanville showed grit, winning his match on court three in three sets, 6-3, 3-6 and 6-3. Playing in the No. 4 position, Liew's stretch of dominance continued as he won in two sets, 6-3 and 7-5. Cohen rounded out the Eagles' wins, taking his match in three sets on court six (7-6 (7-2), 6-7 (3-7), 6-2).
With the win, the Eagles' dual match record improves to 8-1 this spring. Emory will play its second and final match in Texas on Friday afternoon when they take on the No. 14 ranked Trinity Tigers. The match against the Tigers is scheduled to start at 4:00 PM (ET).