For the North Carolina men’s tennis team, fall doesn’t just mean Halloween, Thanksgiving and leaves changing color. It means tournaments, and lots of them.
The ITA Carolinas Regional, already the fourth tournament of the team’s fall season and first indoors, wrapped up at UNC’s Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center on Monday. Results for the Tar Heels ranged from first-round exits to appearances in both the singles and doubles finals.
“I thought we did pretty good,” coach Sam Paul said. “We’ll work on some stuff, but obviously some guys are improving and getting better. It’s still the fall, but I thought they had a good tournament.”
Of the nine Tar Heels appearing in the 114-player singles bracket, four advanced to the third round. Two of them — Stefan Hardy and Jose Hernandez — reached the semifinals and final, respectively.
Hernandez and Hardy, who began the tournament as the second and fifth seeds overall, were dominant in runs to the final four. Prior to the semifinal round, Hardy took every match in straight sets, while Hernandez required a third set only once.
But neither could get past tournament No. 1 seed and nationally ranked No. 2 Henrique Cunha of Duke, who defeated Hardy 6-3, 6-3 on Monday morning before coming from behind in the singles final against Hernandez for a 6-7(8), 6-2, 6-3 win.
“(Cunha) is really consistent,” said Hernandez. “I really got in trouble returning his serve. That was basically the key of the match.”
Brennan Boyajian, ranked 66th nationally in the ITA Tennis preseason poll and No. 6 in the tournament, played well at times, but fell in the third round to eventual semifinalist Dave Thomson of N.C. State. After failing to win the tiebreaker in an exhausting first set, Boyajian never recovered, losing 7-6(5), 6-4.
“You still have another chance to go (after the first set), it’s not like it’s over, but it’s definitely a momentum swing,” Boyajian said. “It would have been nice to win that first set.”
