Men's tennis team experiences ups and downs in three-day Penn Invitational

After a great season where the Princeton men’s tennis team qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 17 years before losing out to Minnesota in the Round of 64, the Tigers will look to repeat such success this season.

The Tigers opened their season in Philadelphia as they played in a three-day Penn Invitational against players from many different schools, including St. John’s, Old Dominion, Penn, Buffalo, William & Mary and VCU. This tournament was considered a good way to gauge the players after a long summer, and there were some impressive performances over the three days in the tournament.

All in all, the Tigers played decently, winning nine of their 20 doubles matches and 25 of their 39 matches. The Tigers will obviously aim to do even better than that as they hope to match or even exceed their win total from last season and claim another Ivy League title and NCAA Tournament berth.

“I was a bit disappointed in our energy and execution in doubles,” men's tennis coach Billy Pate said in a post-event statement. “I thought we performed well throughout the whole weekend."

However, there were bright moments for the team during the weekend, where the team’s only freshman Jimmy Wasserman crushed his opponent Alex Roszkowski of St. John's 6-0, 6-0 or Mohamed El Tonbari, who dominated singles play and won all five of his singles matches in comfortable fashion.

Also, junior Tom Colautti just received news this week that he will be nationally ranked this fall, as the 118th best player in the nation. Colautti also received an automatic qualification berth in the ITA All-America qualifying singles and doubles, where he will pair up with sophomore Luke Gamble. This marks a first for Colautti as he receives his first ITA All-America berth and national ranking. This means that Colautti will be playing in Tulsa, Okla., in early October to compete in the tournament.

This upcoming weekend, the Tigers will return home to the Lenz Tennis Center to host the Ivy Plus Tournament on Sept. 18-20. This will be an exciting chance for the Tigers to continue to gel as a team and improve on their performances as they begin to build on an impressive 2014-15 season.