After day one of the Pacific-10 Conference Tennis Championships, only one player each from the men’s and women’s teams recorded victories Thursday.
For the Oregon men’s team, Chris King defeated Washington’s Matt Leon 6-4, 6-1, but he did so in the invitational bracket.
On the women’s side, sophomore Monika Gieczys advanced to the main draw’s round of 16 by getting past UCLA’s Petya Marinova … kind of. The two actually never played because Marinova was forced to withdraw from the match due to injury.
Other than King and Gieczys, it was mostly a down day for the Ducks at the league tournament in Ojai, Calif.
The women’s top singles player didn’t go down without a fight in her singles match. Janice Nyland forced Arizona’s Laresa Marino to earn her first round victory. Nyland dropped the first set 6-3, but came back to capture the second by a count of 6-4 to force a third and final set. Nyland, though, couldn’t finish Marino off and lost 6-3.
The only other women’s Duck in the main draw was Davina Mendiburu, who fell to Washington State’s Erica Perkins, 6-1, 6-2. Oregon’s Courtney Nagle and Jeannette Mattson both competed in the invitational bracket, but lost.
As for the men, each of its four competitors in the main draw of 32 were defeated in straight sets. Oregon’s Oded Teig couldn’t handle California’s Balazs Veress (6-4, 6-3), Buck Mink had a tough time with Arizona State’s Nic Dubey (6-1,6-1) and David Becker battled tough, but lost against Jean-Noel Grinda of UCLA (6-3, 6-4). Rounding out the four-man Duck crew was Martin Pawlowski, who got beat by ASU’s Mirza Duranovic.
Both Duck teams will return to action today with doubles play and Thursday’s losers will also compete in the consolation bracket.