Tennis: Siow, Spindler take doubles at regional

The men’s tennis team competed in its biggest tournament of the fall season this weekend, sending nine Tigers to the International Tennis Association Northeast Regional at Cornell. Juniors Matt Siow and Matt Spindler took home the doubles title, while junior Matija Pecotic reached the semifinals of the singles bracket.

The No. 9-seeded duo of Spindler and Siow, who is also a sports writer for The Daily Princetonian, got off to a hot start on Friday by defeating Yuri Gricheno and Marco Jemersic of Fairleigh Dickinson University 8-4 in the opening round. On Saturday, Siow and Spindler convincingly eliminated Boston College’s Jonathan Raude and Alex Skinner 8-3. In the round of 16, Siow and Spindler ran into their first higher-ranked opponent, the No. 5 team of Dartmouth’s Michael Laser and Xander Centenari. But the Ivy League rivals were no match for the Tigers, who advanced with an 8-4 victory. In the quarterfinal match on Monday, Siow and Spindler ran into even more tough competition. Columbia’s Winston Lin and Haig Schneiderman battled Siow and Spindler, but the Princeton pair pulled out a gritty 9-7 victory.

On Tuesday, the final day of competition, Siow and Spindler drew another difficult league opponent in Yale’s Daniel Hoffman and Marc Powers. Spindler and Hoffman know each other’s games well, having played many singles matches against each other. Powers was carrying some momentum from the singles courts, where he had defeated Pecotic in a tough semifinal match the day before.

The Bulldog duo put up a good fight against the Tigers, but they were unable to overcome the strong play of Siow and Spindler, who again won 9-7.

With this victory, the two Tigers earned a finals matchup against Harvard’s Alistair Felton and Casey MacMaster. The Crimson duo had been waiting for the other semifinal match to be decided, so Siow and Spindler found themselves beginning the finals less than a half hour after winning their semifinal match.

Siow said this quick turnaround benefited the Tigers.

“We played our semifinal match today while the Harvard team was waiting for the finals,” Siow said. “We finished our match against Hoffman and Powers and then played the finals match 15 minutes later, so we were warm. We were pumped up and ready to go, and in the first game that they served we broke them at love, so that gave us a lot of momentum. We were serving well, and that really helped us a lot.”

Siow and Spindler quickly took a 3-0 lead and built on their hot start, taking advantage of their momentum against a cold Harvard team.

The intensity and energy of the Tigers proved too much for the Crimson to handle, as Siow and Spindler defeated Felton and MacMaster 8-5 to clinch the Northeast Regional doubles crown.

Spindler explained how Princeton’s intensity affected the outcome.

“We came out so pumped and fired up, and we were right on top of them from the first ball,” Spindler said. “We grabbed momentum early, and they were playing catch-up. We had them back on their heels and never let them get back on even ground with us.”

Playing in the doubles finals of the Northeast Regional tournament was not a new experience for Spindler, who finished second alongside sophomore Augie Bloom to a different Harvard duo last year.

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Spindler applied what he learned from that experience to help ensure victory this time around.

“Last year, when I was playing with Augie, we came out flat and nervous, kind of the opposite of what happened today,” Spindler said. “We played a Harvard team also, and they jumped on us from the beginning. They sent us a message of how intense they were, and we were playing catch-up from the beginning. We were never in the match. This year I knew the key was to be extremely intense, so we really showed the other team that we were going to take it, and they weren’t going to have anything to do about it.”

Overall, Spindler was pleased with what he and Siow accomplished.

“We knew we were a good team, but it’s easier said than done to put that into playing well consistently,” he said. “We always knew we were good. I think it’s a huge growth for us as tennis players to put it all together in one of the big tournaments of the fall and to put together a victory like this ... It was our goal from the beginning, and to put this together feels incredible.”

“We definitely sent a message to the other teams in the region,” Siow said. “Last year in the Ivy League, we [as a team] struggled with doubles — I think we lost six out of the seven doubles points. The main thing we wanted to do here was send a message. I don’t think anyone expected me and Spindler to get to the finals and win.”

In the singles bracket, Pecotic advanced the furthest of the six Tigers. Pecotic entered this weekend coming off a strong showing at last weekend’s Columbia Fall Classic, in which he won the A singles flight. Although he has been hampered by an injury for much of the fall season, last year’s undisputed Ivy League Player of the Year had played well enough to earn the No. 2 seed in singles at this weekend’s regional tournament.

Pecotic easily disposed of his first opponent in the round of 64, beating Brown’s Will Spector 6-1, 6-1. The junior continued to sweep his opponents, defeating No. 17 Alex Sidney of Cornell 6-1, 6-2 before eliminating Dartmouth’s Cameron Ghorbani 6-2, 6-2 in the round of 16. Against stiffer competition on Monday, Pecotic overcame No. 7 Milo Hauk of St. John’s 7-5, 6-4 in the quarterfinals before losing a tough battle to Powers in the semifinals 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.

Spindler reached the final 16 in singles play and Siow made the round of 32 before losing to the sixth-seeded Powers. Bloom, sophomore Dan Richardson and freshman Zack McCourt lost their first matches.

The Tigers will break from competition for a few weeks before wrapping up fall play on the weekend of Nov. 4. Siow and Spindler will travel to the ITA National Indoor Collegiate Championships as doubles champions of the Northeast Regional, becoming the first Tigers to reach the indoor national tournament since Kyle Kliegerman ’01 and John Portlock ’01, while the rest of the team will compete at the Cornell Invitational.