Tennis splits matches to open season

UTC's men's tennis team opened the 2012 season by splitting a pair of matches with Radford and Tennessee Tech.

The Mocs fell to No. 71 ranked Radford 7-0 Jan. 20 at the Hixson Racquet Club in their first match of the season. UTC did win one of three doubles matches on the day, as the duo of juniors Roberto Vieira, from Bedfordview, South Africa, and Chris Smith, from Johnson City, Tenn., scored an 8-5 win over Radford's Thomas Dehaen and Nicholas Sayer.

Fellow junior Jackson Tresnan, from Apopka, Fla., nearly put the Mocs on the board, taking his match with Joe Mills the distance, only to fall 5-7, 6-3, 1-0 (10-8).

The Mocs bounced back Sunday Jan. 22 with a decisive 6-1 win over the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles. The win evened the Mocs record to 1-1 early in 2012 with the win.

Head coach Carlos Garcia's team proved strong, taking five of six singles matches. Vieira scored a win in the No.1 match, defeating former Davis Cup participant Syrym Abdukhailikov 7-6 (7-3), 6-2.

Junior Ankit Chopra, from Chandigrah, India, squeezed out a victory in the No. 3 slot with a 2-6, 6-4, 7-5 win over Alejandro Bueno. Chopra worked to push his match to a third set, only to fall behind 5-2. He fought back, rattling of five straight games to take the set and the match 7-5.

Smith also won at No. 2 after falling behind 3-6 in the opening frame. Smith recovered by taking two straight sets, wining 6-2 and 6-4.

Freshman Pavel Grigorjevs, from Riga, Latvia, won 6-2, 1-6, 7-6, (7-4) to earn his first career victory at Chattanooga.

Grigorjevs was down 5-3 in the third before coming back strong to take the tiebreaker and finish with the win.

Tresnan notched his first win of the year as well with a 6-3, 7-6, (7-4) over Tennessee Tech's Artem Taraspy in the No. 4 match.

Tresnan and Grigorjevs also paired together to earn one of two Mocs doubles wins on the day.

Chopra and junior Stephen Crofford teamed up to earn the second doubles victory of the day with an 8-4 win.

Garcia, who is in his eleventh season as head tennis coach at UTC, was pleased with the way his team recovered after their disappointing loss to Radford.

"We have matured a lot during the offseason," Garcia said. " It was nice to see us display that maturity on the court. We closed out a lot of close matches and had guys come back from big deficits. 

UTC will look to build off the win over Tennessee Tech as they take on Murray State Jan. 27 and Middle Tennessee Jan. 29.

Chattanooga will look to gain momentum as they enter the heart of their season with wins over the Racers and Blue Raiders.

Murray State is coming off a dismal 5-15 season last year. The Racers return four players from last season's team, but they are young, with four freshmen rounding out their roster.

MTSU is looking to improve a 13-14 record from last season, which included a NCAA Tournament appearance. One of those wins was a 7-0 victory over UTC Jan. 22. 

The Blue Raiders return just three players from the 2011 squad and add six freshmen to the team in 2012.

Chattanooga will hit the road for their next two matches in Murray, Ky. and Nashville before returning to the Hixson Racquet Center on Feb. 4 to take on Lipscomb.

For more information on UTC tennis including rosters, schedules and stats, visit gomocs.com.