No. 36 Oregon men’s tennis drops match at No. 4 Stanford

Posted on April 20, 2018

Originally Posted on Emerald Media via UWIRE

The No. 36 Oregon men’s tennis team kicked off its final regular season weekend in the Bay Area with a 4-1 loss to No. 4 Stanford.

The Ducks went into Friday having won six of their past seven matches, but were no match against the top-5 Cardinal.

Although the match did not go the team’s way, they still had a decent performance against a highly-ranked Stanford squad. The Cardinal possess two of the top-50 doubles pairs and three of the top-100 singles players.

Sophomore Ty Gentry won the only point for the Ducks, downing No. 90 Sameer Kumar 6-3, 6-3 in straight sets. The win was Gentry’s first in the No. 3 position. With three seniors graduating, Gentry will most likely become a regular in the top-3 of the lineup next season.

Gentry’s move up was necessary because the usual No. 2 position, Simon Stevens, was absent from the lineup. Ethan Young-Smith made his fourth start of the season in place of Stevens, fighting hard in the six position and earning an unfinished match against William Genesen.

Other changes in the lineup included Akihiro Tanaka moving from third to second and Riki Oshima moving from six to five.

In the No. 1 spot, per usual, was No. 24 Thomas Laurent. He was matched-up against No. 8 Tom Fawcett. The highly-anticipated top-25 matchup wound up going unfinished however with Fawcett leading.