CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Brandeis University sophomore David Aizenberg (Highland Park, Ill./Highland Park) teamed with rookie Anupreeth Coramutla (Monroe Township, N.J./Phillips Andover) to win the main doubles championship at the 2017 MIT Invitational.
Seeded second in the main draw, the duo used a series of close wins to capture the crown. They opened with their only win of the weekend by more than two games as they defeated Cheng and Go from host MIT, 8-4, on Friday afternoon. In Saturday's second round, they edged Wesleyan (Conn.) teammates Smith and Finkelman, 8-6. In the quarterfinals the same day, they topped seventh-seeded Taylor and Barr from Williams College, 9-8, winning the tiebreaker 7-4, to reach the semifinals.
The Brandeis tandem were joined in Sunday's final rounds by three squads from Amherst College. In the semifinals, it was an 8-6 win over Wei and Kaplan from the Mammoths, and in the finals, they defeated Fung and Hillis, who had dispatched the first and fourth seeds, by their final 8-6 score of the weekend. The duo had previously advanced to the finals of their initial tournament together at Middlebury College.
In the main draw, senior Ethan Saal (Scarsdale, N.Y./Abraham Joshua Heschel School) and sophomore Benjamin Wolfe (Blue Bell, Pa./Wissahickon) reached the second round with an 8-4 win over MIT's Ampudia and Deng before falling to fourth-seeded Bessette and Ma of Amherst. In the back draw, junior Jackson Kogan (Pacific Palisades, Calif./Windward School) and rookie Rajan Vohra (Glen Head, N.Y./North Shore) upset Wolfe and Zhao of Bowdoin, 8-1, to reach the semifinals before falling 9-7 to the MIT tandem of Cheng and Go that Aizenberg and Coramutla had defeated in the opening round.
In singles action, three Judges won first-round matches. Coramutla defeated Guo of Middlebury, 7-5, 6-4, in the opening round before falling to 9-16 seed Kevin Ma of Amherst, 6-2, 6-4. Kogan edged Roji of Wesleyan in a marathon, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, to advance before bowing to third-seeded William de Quant of Middlebury, 7-5, 6-4. Rookie Nikhil Das (Smithfield, R.I./Moses Brown School) also advanced with a three-set win, defeating Wesleyan's Daniels, 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, but suffered a 6-1, 7-5 loss to Middlebury's Noah Farrell, the second seed.
Aizenberg (6-1, 6-3 over Cuervo of Bowdoin) and Vohra (6-3, 6-7 (3-7), 10-6 over Go of MIT) each won a round in the back draw after dropping their opening match.
The Judges close out their fall season next weekend at the Bates College Wallach Invitational.