The men’s tennis team had a full weekend with two ACC rivals in town to face the Hurricanes at the Neil Schiff Tennis Center.
Miami dropped its first match against No. 37 Notre Dame 4-3 on Friday afternoon but rebounded on Sunday to trounce Boston College (BC) 6-1 for the team’s first win in ACC play this year.
The loss to the Irish (11-6, 3-3) marked the fifth straight loss in conference play and fourth in a row for the Hurricanes, but the Canes (7-10, 1-5) came out ready to play on Sunday against the struggling Eagles of Boston College.
BC (3-10, 0-6) has yet to win a conference game, sitting at the bottom of the ACC standings.
Notre Dame opened the match strong on Friday with an 8-2 victory by the No. 9 ranked doubles team of Alex Lawson and Billy Pecor over the Miami freshmen duo of Piotr Lomacki and Nile Clark.
The Irish would go on to win the doubles point and take a 1-0 lead heading into singles play.
“We got off to a slow start in doubles,” Hurricanes head coach Mario Rincón said. “We will have to play much better the rest of the way in doubles.”
Notre Dame and Miami traded singles matches until the two schools were knotted at 3-3. Josh Hagar secured the victory for the Irish in the final singles match of the afternoon in straight sets 6-3, 6-4 over senior Wilfredo Gonzalez.
“It was a really close match,” Rincón said. “It is really tough to win four singles against a top team.”
The Canes were able to bounce back from the tough loss and put out one of their best performances of the season against the Eagles.
Miami opened the match against Boston College in a frustrating fashion once again in the doubles department. The Canes dropped two matches and entered singles play trailing 1-0.
Senior Henrique Tsukamoto got Miami rolling with a painless 6-2, 6-2 win over Kyle Childree and the Canes never looked back.
Sophomore Bernard Tefel took his match with ease, beating Will Turner in straight sets 6-1, 6-3.
Freshman Christian Langmo had a bit of a scare when he dropped his first set against Philip Nelson 3-6, but Langmo dominated the next two sets 6-1, 6-1 to put the Canes ahead 3-1.
Gonzalez secured the win for the Canes with a 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 victory over Hank Workman. Clark and fellow freshman Niclas Genovese won their matches 7-5, 7-5 and 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, respectively, to seal the singles sweep over the Eagles.
The Hurricanes next play against Florida State in Tallahassee on Friday.