The Marquette men's tennis team opened the regular season with a resounding victory over Illinois-Chicago Wednesday night at the Helfaer Tennis Stadium.
The Golden Eagles defeated UIC 6-1 behind strong play in both singles and doubles. Marquette captured all three doubles matches and five of its six singles matches.
"It's a good start," Marquette head coach Steve Rodecap said. "I felt like our doubles got us off to a quick start."
Freshmen Pete Van Lieshout and Brett Binkley paired off as Marquette's No. 2 doubles team and quickly overwhelmed UIC's Karol Zarucki and Paul Glendenning, winning 8-4. Marquette's most experienced double's combination, juniors Ian Kawass and Ricky Servoss, also cruised to an easy 8-3 victory over Sean Kreymborg and Eric Fey.
The No. 1 doubles match lived up to its seeding, as Marquette's senior Troy Delmege and junior Eigis Vedrickas defeated UIC's Ivan Kovalev and Andy Lockhart 9-8 in a thrilling 8-6 tiebreak. Delmege and Verdrickas squandered an opportunity to win the match when they broke Kovalev's serve in the 11th game but gave the break point back two games later and had to scramble to tie the match at 8-8.
Kovalev and Lockhart jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead in the tiebreak, but Delmege hit several well-placed shots to even the score at 5-5 before he and Verdrickas won three of the next four points to win the match.
"I thought that when we were down (4-1), they had been quite lucky," Delmege, the team's lone senior, said. "It only took a little even luck and I thought we would we win."
Delmege also defeated Zarucki 6-4, 6-4 in his singles match. Kawas beat Lockhart in straight sets 6-4, 6-3.
Binkley also won in straight sets over Fey 6-4, 6-0. Binkley's dominating play in the second set so frustrated Fey that the UIC freshman threw his racket over the roughly 15-foot high canvas barrier that separates the courts from each other.
Van Lieshout defeated Kreymborg 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 in the only singles match that extended to a third set. Fellow freshman Greg Sirotek fell to Glendenning 6-1, 6-2 in Marquette's only defeat of the night.
Verdrickas won 6-4, 6-3 against Kovalev, exacting a little revenge for Kovalev's victory over him at the Marquette Invitational in October. Delmege, Van Lieshout and Sirotek also faced the same opponents they played against in October.
"We had a lot of the same matches that we did in the fall, which is rare," Rodecap said. "It didn't really matter though, because the fall season is completely different."
The Golden Eagles travel to East Lansing, Mich. on Saturday for a match against 55th-ranked Michigan State. The Spartans are 2-0, with victories coming over Wright State and Northern Illinois.
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 20 2005.