The No. 65 Auburn Men's Tennis team (6-9, 2-4 SEC) returned home this weekend after two weeks on the road and served up a 5-2 win over No. 23 Vanderbilt (10-7, 2-4 SEC) Sunday at the Yarbrough Tennis Center. Although the Tigers lost the doubles point, they won five-straight singles matches to beat the Commodores.
"I thought that we played well at doubles," said head coach Eric Shore. "Vandy is very good in doubles. That's been one of their strengths all year. They're very good in doubles and I think we're getting better in doubles and closer, and it came right down to a tiebreaker. We're obviously getting better. I feel like we have a ways to go but we're moving in the right direction."
Junior Tim Puetz and sophomore Alex Stamchev, the No. 8 doubles pair, beat Vanderbilt's Adam Baker and Alex Zotov, 8-6. "Doubles (was definitely the hardest part about today)," Puetz said. "We're still struggling at doubles. We're not getting the doubles point. Fortunately, we're doing well in singles right now, but down the road we're not going to win matches if we don't start getting the doubles points."
Freshman Andreas Mies and junior Michel Monteiro ultimately fell to No. 74 Ryan Lipman and Bryant Salcedo, 9-8. The two teams were tied at eight, but the 'Dores won the tiebreaker, 7-3, giving them the win. Freshmen Tim Hewitt and Lucas Lopasso were beat by 'Dores' Alex DiValerio and Vijay Paul, 8-6. "I find doubles harder than singles," Hewitt said. "I find we get lost, and we're a lot better at singles."
The Tigers immediately took the lead of singles play. "Coming off doubles and losing a tough doubles point, even though mine and Lucas' match wasn't that close the other two doubles were really close and we could have won the point," Hewitt said. "Coming back was tough, but we all got fired up and started well. It was really good to look at the scoreboard. It gave us a lot of encouragement. I looked up and, apart from Court 6, we were 4-1 up on every court. It was really nice."
No. 23 (in singles) Puetz easily defeated Lipman 6-1 and 6-3 on Court 1. "I'm glad we got a good win finally," Puetz said. "They were ranked No. 23, we need those wins to qualify for NCAAs. We've lost a lot close so far this season, so it feels good to come away with a win today." Over on Court 2, Hewitt defeated Paul 6-2 and 6-3.
"I served really well; I was really pleased with how I served," Hewitt said. "I faced a couple of break points in the second set and got myself out of it. I was really pleased." No. 93 (in singles) Stamchev conquered Salcedo 6-1 and 6-4 on Court 3. On Court 4, Lopasso fell to Zotov in the first set, 5-7, but came back in the second set and won 6-4, and won the tie breaker, 1-0.
Rounding out the singles wins for the Tigers, Mies beat Baker on Court 5 with two sets of 6-2. The only singles loss for the Tigers was freshman Oliver Strecker, who fell to Charlie Jones on Court 6, 7-6 and 6-4.
"I'm really proud of Tim (Puetz); he's got like an 11-4 record and it's really nice to be able to come out on a court and feel like he's going to win every match because he plays great tennis," Hewitt said. "Stam is doing really well and Andy's fast. We're rolling now--the schedule gets a bit easier now."
Auburn was happy to finally return to its home courts after being on the road for two weeks.
"It feels awesome being back home," Puetz said. "It feels really good to sleep in your own bed and to have some fans here for you. We were gone for two weeks before this, from Wednesday to Sunday night."
The Tigers play at home again tomorrow against Arkansas at 5 p.m. for an All Auburn, All Orange event.
"It's so nice to play at home, it's great," Shore said. "Everybody's comfortable and it's just really nice to not have that long trip home after a match. We've got some fans out here and next week should be even better. We're going to have a big promotion Friday night and a night match, so we're looking forward to next weekend. We've got to keep getting better but we're definitely headed in the right direction."
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