Capkovic’s win takes Princeton past St. John’s

In the first men’s match of the weekend, Princeton’s No. 1 singles player, junior Peter Capkovic, took on Artem Vlasenko. Out of practice and suffering from a back injury, Capkovic got off to a slow start, and his opponent ran away with the first set, 6-1.

“I didn’t play any practice sets,” Capkovic said. “I didn’t know what to do, [and] I wasn’t very confident.”

In the second set, however, Capkovic tightened his game, managing to bring the set to a tiebreaker.

“I was playing well in the first [set], just not executing well,” he said of his only match of the day.

After winning the tiebreaker 8-6, Capkovic dominated the third and final set, winning the match 1-6, 7-6, 6-3. “I think it was just me warming up, as I got into it I got better with every point.”

Junior Alex Krueger-Wyman filled in for a sidelined Alex Vuckovic on the No. 2 court against Sasha Svetlakov. In the first set, neither player dominated the other, but Krueger-Wyman managed to turn the momentum in his favor early in the second.

“The first set I had a lot of chances and got unlucky in the tiebreaker,” Krueger-Wyman said. “[But] in the second set I destroyed him.”

By the third, however, the momentum swung back in favor of Svetlakov, who won the decisive set for a 7-6, 1-6, 6-4 victory.

Sophomores George Carpeni, Charlie Brosens and Ilya Trubov also won their matches, while freshman Ryan Kim dropped his match in three sets, bringing the final score to 4-3 in favor of the Tigers.

In the afternoon match against St. Joe’s, the No. 1 team of Krueger-Wyman and Carpeni had troubles in its doubles game. The match was much closer than the score suggested, as no player dominated his serve and nearly every game reached deuce.

“I was serving really poorly [and] missed a lot of volleys,” said Krueger-Wyman, who usually has little trouble with his firecracker serve.

The match continued long after the other two doubles teams had hit the sidelines. Finally, when serving for the eight-game pro set at 7-5, Krueger-Wyman took serious mileage off his first serve to hit a kick serve that landed on the sideline. His opponent, taken off guard by the shot, swung and completely missed the ball before jetting his racquet toward the back fence out of frustration. Princeton won the match, 8-5.

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From there it was on to the No. 1 singles court for Krueger-Wyman, whose game improved steadily throughout the day. With Capkovic sidelined, he had big shoes to fill in that match, and after the first few games of the first set it was looking like it was going to be a long match.

“Their No. 1 is usually pretty good, and I was a bit nervous, but I got up for it mentally,” Krueger-Wyman said.

Halfway through the first set he started to pick up the volleys he had been missing throughout the day, which put pressure on his opponent to come up with big passing shots and forced errors off his racquet.

“After a few games, I got the adrenaline going and the legs moving. I guess I needed three matches to wake me up,” Krueger-Wyman said.

He got the early break in the second set and never let go of the match. At 5-2 he hit a high-kicking second serve, which his opponent managed to return with a sharp, angled forehand landing on the sideline, four feet from the net. Most mortals would have missed the return, but Krueger-Wyman hit a forehand down the line. He won the match 6-3, 6-2.

Trubov, senior Mark Gober, senior Jonathan Leslie and freshman Alex Faust also won their singles matches. The only loss for the Tigers came at No. 2 singles, as Kim lost his match after defaulting in the second set. The men will head for warmer weather next weekend as they take on Clemson and Furman in South Carolina, before playing Georgia State on March 2.

The women had a tough weekend as they headed to North Carolina, where the Tigers dropped all three of their matches 6-1 against highly ranked opponents.

Friday night, freshman Taylor Marable was the only Tiger winner, as No. 8 Duke won five of six singles matches and took the doubles point in Durham. Marable, playing at the No. 4 position, defeated her opponent, 6-3, 5-7, 10-7.

The next afternoon, Princeton had its hands full with No. 2 Northwestern, and sophomore No. 1 Melissa Saiontz emerged as the only victorious Tiger for the day when she claimed a huge victory over Georgia Rose, who is the No. 3 singles player in the nation, 4-6, 6-4, 1-0 (4). No other orange-and-black-clad players had any success, as the Wildcats won the other five singles by wide margins and easily won the doubles point.

Saiontz was again the lone winning player for Princeton on Sunday afternoon in Raleigh, as N.C. State soundly defeated the Tigers 5-1 in singles and swept the doubles matches. Saiontz defeated her opponent, Daria Petrovic, 6-4, 6-1.

The women have this weekend off before returning to action at Rutgers on March 7.