Marc Nichols and Andrew Marks were eliminated in the semifinals of the Mercer County Tennis Tournament on Wednesday. After losing to Princeton’s Greg Wu in a three-set semifinal match, Marks defeated Hun’s Ankeet Kansupada in the consolation round, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. The following story was written prior to the semifinal round.
By: Steve Feitl
With two Cardinals still alive heading into the semifinals, the Mercer County Tournament had to be considered a success for the Lawrence High School boys tennis team.
Prior to Wednesday’s semifinal round (occurring after The Lawrence Ledger’s afternoon deadline), Lawrence was in a tie with West Windsor-Plainsboro North for fourth place with 12 points.
Princeton and West Windsor-Plainsboro South were in the lead with 20 points apiece, while Hun sat at third with 18 points.
The highlight of the tournament for the Cardinals has been the play of second singles player Andrew Marks, who faced little adversity in the first two rounds.
In the opening contest against Josh McCormick from Hamilton, Marks won handily, 6-0, 6-0. Then in the quarterfinals, Marks defeated Prashanth Gururaja of Steinert by the identical straight-set score.
However, it’s not likely that Marks will be able to win his next round without dropping a single game like he did in the first two rounds.
"Marks has been playing very well for us at second singles," head coach Pat Tarrant said. "But he’s going to be tested right away (Wednesday)."
Also advancing to the semifinals was No. 1 singles player Marc Nichols.
He had a challenging opening-round match against Hopewell Valley’s Adam Friedland. Nichols had easily defeated the Bulldog during the season, but HoVal’s player was much more consistent in the MCT contest.
Still, after winning a first-set tie-breaker, Nichols took the second set, 6-2, and advanced.
"Marc had a tough match with Friedland," Tarrant said. "It was a very tight first set. It was a tough match for him, but once he got by that, he cruised in the next round."
Indeed, Nichols rolled past Ewing’s Matt Konkle, 6-0, 6-1, to advance to the semifinals on Wednesday.
The other Cardinal singles player, Josh Margolis, also advanced to the second round. He defeated Jon Zinser of Pennington, 6-0, 6-3, in the first round, before succumbing to Andrew Maisel of Hun in the quarterfinals.
Maisel eventually won, 6-3, 6-3, but Tarrant noted that each set was close at 4-3, before the Hun player turned it on to advance.
Lawrence’s first doubles team of Jordan Kaplan and Eric Graber had a back-and-forth battle with Doug Robl and Yishen Gu of WW-P North. Eventually, the Knights’ duo won the three-set thriller, 7-6, 2-6, 6-2.
The Cardinals’ second doubles duo of Aaron Naar and Chad Ham fared a bit better.
Naar and Ham defeated Rajeev Partharasathy and Jeff Weber from Steinert, 6-1, 6-1, in the first round. Then the Cardinal duo came up against Hun’s Dave Fine and Mike Foley and lost another three-set match, 6-1, 2-6, 6-0.
Tarrant noted that Naar and Ham hadn’t played a lot together this year and gained a lot of good experience taking on the Hun duo, which has already faced a difficult schedule of opponents this season.
"I think they’ll take something from that," Tarrant said of Naar and Ham.