The Elon men’s tennis team dropped its first conference match of the season after a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to Georgia Southern University on Sunday April 7. The Phoenix were without junior Cameron Silverman for the singles portion of the match. He was able to battle through an illness in doubles, but was unable to continue into his singles match
The Phoenix got off to a hot start winning all three doubles matches. Freshman Robert Lindgren and sophomore Brian Kowalski defeated freshman Rayane Djouad and sophomore Andrew Dromsky 8-2 at No. 2 doubles.
Sophomores Juan Madrid and Jordan Kaufman defeated sophomore Kyle Hoffman and senior Alex Doherty 8-2 at No. 3 doubles.
Silverman and sophomore Stefan Fortmann defeated junior Oliver Webb and senior Matthijs Verdam 8-5 at No. 1 doubles to complete the sweep.
Kaufman gave Elon a 2-0 lead with his straight sets win over Verdam at No. 3 singles.
Madrid defeated Webb at No. 5 singles 6-3, 6-2 to give the Phoenix a commanding 3-0 lead.
Hoffman then defeated freshman Ishmael Sanchez Delfin at No. 6 singles 7-5, 3-6, 6-1 to give Georgia Southern their first point of the match and start the comeback.
Codina Sala then made it a 3-2 match with his 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 win against Kowalski at No. 4 singles. Djouad tied the match at 3 with a 6-2, 0-6, 6-4 win against Lindgren .
Dromsky completed the comeback for Georgia Southern with his 6-4, 6-7, 6-2 win over Silverman’s fill in a No. 1 singles in Fortmann.
The loss drops the Phoenix to 14-6 on the season and 7-1 in the Southern Conference. Elon will travel to local rival the University of North Carolina at Greensboro on Tuesday April 9 for a make-up of a match that was rained out last week.