It had been 327 days since the Oregon men’s tennis team had played a competitive match. On Friday, they returned to action, taking down the BYU Cougars, 5-2.

To start off in doubles, Joshua Charlton and Brandon Lam dominated, 6-0. The other two matches were much tighter, as both went to tiebreakers. 

Luke and Quinn Vandecasteele’s match was close from the beginning. The two sides went back and forth, holding serve as the BYU team played a very net-heavy approach. The Ducks finally broke to go up 6-5, but BYU immediately broke back to tie it at 6. The Cougars took it with an 8-6 win in the tiebreaker.

The doubles point came down to Emmanuel Coste and Jesper Klov-Nilsson. After facing a 2-5 deficit, they roared back to tie it at five. The teams exchanged breaks to make it 6-6. 

Just like the last match, the tiebreaker went down to the wire. Both teams had their chances, but neither seemed to be able to put it away. The Ducks finally ended up squeaking it out, 13-11, to take the doubles point.

Then it was off to singles play. Quinn Vandecasteele came away with the first singles victory for Oregon, comfortably winning 6-1, 6-2.

His brother Luke followed suit with a 7-5, 6-2 victory.

Charlton, ranked No. 30 in the nation by the Oracle ITA preseason release, matched up against the No. 98 Sean Hill. He was down 1-4 early, but came back to narrowly take the first set, 7-5.

He lost the second set 1-6, and Hill took the 10-point tiebreaker, 10-5.

The only other Oregon loss was Ryoma Matsushita, who fell 4-6, 4-6.

Coste, ranked No. 76 in the country, had to make a quick transition into his singles match after coming up with that triumphant doubles victory. He dominated in the first set, winning 6-1, but faltered in the second set, 3-6.

Coste came back strong in the third set, winning 6-1 and comfortably securing the victory for the Ducks.

Klov-Nilsson, the other half of that heroic doubles pair, won his singles match by a score of 6-2, 6-3.

The Ducks came away cleanly with the victory over the Cougars by an overall score of 5-2. Head coach Nils Schyllander is now just one win away from his 200th victory with the program. The Ducks are now 1-0 on the season, while the Cougars fall to 2-1.

Oregon will take on BYU again tomorrow at 12:00.