ASU Men’s Tennis: Sun Devils nearly shock No. 3 Stanford

(Photo: Mason Kern/WCSN)

The No. 20 Arizona State Sun Devil men’s tennis team lost a marathon match 4-3 to No. 3 Stanford on Thursday evening at the Whiteman Tennis Center in Tempe.

The Sun Devils started off the day by winning the doubles point for the third time the last four matches. The duo of Makey Rakotomalala and Andrea Bolla cruised to a 4-0 lead in their match before finishing off Stanford duo Axel Geller and Tom Fawcett 6-2. The Sun Devil duo of Michael Geerts and Tim Ruehl then clinched the doubles point with a 6-4 victory over Stanford’s Michael Genender and Sameer Kumar. Geerts and Ruehl were tied 3-3 with Genender and Kumar when they reeled off two straight 40-0 points to give them a 5-3 lead that led to the victory.

“We didn’t do that well in the doubles point the last few weeks,” Geerts said. “We mixed up the doubles teams a little bit. I think for us it was really positive. Not only because we won the doubles point against Stanford, which is a great team, but also just to know that we can actually win the doubles point against great teams. That’s something that we proved today.”

In singles, the match began with ASU winning just two first sets. Rakotomalala, Ruehl, Geerts and Thomas Wright all dropped their first sets handily to the Cardinal.

Wright and Geerts would go on to lose their matches in straight sets. Geerts was defeated 6-2, 6-3 by Fawcett, and Wright lost his match 6-3, 6-2 to Stanford’s William Genesen.

However, Rakotomalala and Ruehl would fight back and tie up their matches with second set comebacks. Rakotomalala came back from down 6-3, 3-0 to tie his match up at 6-3,6-4 and Ruehl would fight back to tie up his match by winning a second set tie break. Rakotomalala would go on to drop the third set of his match to lose to Kumar to give Stanford the 3-1 lead in the match.

Bolla then closed out his match in three sets to David Wilcynski 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 to keep the Sun Devils within striking distance of the Cardinal.

This left It up to Ruehl and Benjamin Hannestad to try to complete the comeback for ASU.

Hannestad would dispatch former junior world No. 1 Geller 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 in a three-setter which tied up the match 3-3 and gave Reuhl the chance to finish off Eric Fomba and clinch the upset victory for the Sun Devils.

However, Fomba battled back from down 5-1 in the third set to win six straight points to defeat Reuhl and close out the victory for the Cardinal.

Despite the loss, ASU head coach Matt Hill remained positive. He said that even though his team lost he believes that his team can play with anyone but there is still work to do.

“I think we thought that, and we hadn’t been seeing that a lot early in the year, so it’s great to see that we are moving in that direction,” Hill said. “There’s things to still clean up obviously.”

The loss moves the Sun Devils to 8-4 on the season. They play Cal in their next match on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. MST in Tempe.

“We have to redeem ourselves on Saturday,” Hannestad said. “It’s two different matches. We’re not going to think about this match when we play Cal on Saturday. We are just going to forget about this match and then learn from it and then do better against Cal.”

Results:

Doubles

Michael Geerts and Tim Ruehl (ASU) def. Michael Genender and Sameer Kumar (STAN) 6-4
Makey Rakotomalala and Andrea Bolla (ASU) def. Tom Fawcett and Axel Geller (STAN) 6-2
Timothy Sah and David Wilczynski (STAN) def. Benjamin Hannestad and Thomas Wright (ASU) 6-3

Order of Finish: 3,2,1

Singles