W., m. tennis shine at invitationals, prepare for next week

In the coming two weekends, both the men's and women's tennis teams will hit the courts of the US Tennis Center where just under a month ago, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and the Williams sisters battled for top billing at the US Open. While playing at an intimidating venue is nothing new for the Tigers — the teams spent part of the summer in Europe touring such places as Roland Garros and the Queens Club — the Eastern College Athletic Conference championships, the tournament to be played at Flushing for the first time this year, is always a tight contest. Honing solid match play now is essential if the Tigers are going to vie for the championship.

This past weekend, Princeton inched closer to being ready for such stiff competition. The women's team took on a throng of schools including Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Lehigh, Rutgers and Temple at the Princeton Invitational, while the men's team headed north for the Harvard Invitational.

"It's great to see where we are and work out the kinks," junior captain Alex Kobishyn said of this weekend's women's tournament, which featured both doubles and singles competition at the Pagoda and Lenz courts at Princeton.

Judging from this weekend's contest, women's tennis is looking piercingly deep. And if there were knots in the players' games, they seem to have dealt with them handily.

Even with their top players — senior co-captain Kavitha Krishnamurthy and freshmen Neha Uberoi and Alison Hashmall — at the Cissie Leary Invitational in Philadelphia, junior Jackie Arcario and sophomore Kristin Carlin both won their flights in straight sets, posting 6-0, 6-2 and 6-3, 6-0 victories over Yale and Temple, respectively. Freshman Christine Meng and sophomore Stephanie Berg placed third in each of their flights.

Particularly notable of this weekend's match was the tremendous poise of the newbies.

"Coach Gengler was really impressed with all the freshman," Kobishyn said. "Jessica Siebel was a standout doubles player."

Siebel paired off with Berg for doubles and lost in the A-flight doubles final to Yale in a close 8-6 contest. This past weekend's match was also important to the squad because it was a scouting report of sorts. Brown, Harvard, Columbia and Yale will all be at Flushing on October 12. But if this past weekend's results were any indication of what's to come, Princeton looks like a solid contender. They are seeded second heading into the tournament.

The men, meanwhile, logged in match time in less familiar territory this past weekend. The Tigers played in Cambridge in a hidden dual match format. It included eight individual singles contests and four doubles matches. The men, like the women, were able to get match-tough against several schools including host Harvard, Alabama, Brown, Notre Dame, Rutgers and UNLV.

"The idea was to play a lot of matches," senior captain Trevor Smith said of the invitational.

As they did last week in the Farnsworth tournament, the Tigers showed their strength in the doubles draw. The teams of freshman Darius Craton and sophomore David Gopstein, sophomore Josh Burman and junior Tim Kofol and Smith and freshman Hans Plukas each won three matches.

Plukas was also a standout in singles, defeating each of his four opponents.

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Plukas and Craton will be an important part of the Tiger line up this Saturday.

"They both have done really well," Smith said. "Hopefully they will step up and take the place of the three guys that graduated."

Coming into the weekend, the Tigers are seated fourth in a tournament of 16.

"This will be our third weekend in a row," Smith said of the upcoming ECAC contest. "It's a lot of tennis and a few guys are banged up. But I think we look good."