Tennis Players Advance to Semifinals
Sunday, May 24 2009 by Tim
The Virginia men’s tennis team may have dropped out of the NCAA Tournament earlier than expected this year (they fell 0-4 to USC last weekend) but a few of the Cavalier players are making waves in the singles and doubles tournaments.
On Thursday, the unseeded doubles team of Dominic Inglot and Michael Shabaz defeated the #1 seeded from Ole Miss. They followed that up with a straight-sets win over the team from Texas Tech on Friday. Yesterday, they defeated another seeded team, the #5-8 team from Pepperdine. Inglot and Shabaz will face familiar foes Clay Donato and Taylor Fogleman of North Carolina on Sunday in the semifinals. Donato and Fogleman defeated the Cavalier doubles team in the regular season (8-5) and the NCAA tournament (8-3) while Inglot and Shabaz took the meeting in the ACC Tournament (8-3).
Sophomore Sanam Singh, also playing unseeded, has made a run of his own. He defeated unseeded Christoph Muller from Rice and unseeded Dimitar Kutrovsky from Texas to reach the Sweet 16. There he defeated 6-seeded John-Patrick Smith of Tennessee. He followed that impressive win up with a win over the #1 seed Amau Brugues of Tulsa. Singh is the only player in the tournament who has yet to drop a set. He meets 9-16 seed Steven Moneke of Ohio State in the semifinals on Sunday.
Just a quick heads up – earlier this afternoon the Virginia doubles pair of senior Dominic Inglot and sophomore Michael Shabaz won the NCAA Doubles Championship. The unseeded pair, having already upset the #1 seed , took out the #2 seed in three sets