Jonathan Irwanto is heading to the ITA Northwest Super Regional Championships after winning in doubles Sunday in Berkeley.
BERKELEY – California men’s tennis freshmen Jonathan Irwanto and Tim Stepanov defeated a Pacific pair Sunday on the final day of the ITA Northwest Regional Championships at Cal to qualify for the upcoming ITA Northwest Super Regional Championships at Stanford.
In one of two doubles qualifying matches for super regionals, the Golden Bears needed to make a big comeback in the second-set tiebreaker en route to completing a 5-7, 7-6(8), 10-8 victory over the Tigers’ Terence Das and Tiago Silva at the Hellman Tennis Complex. Stepanov and Irwanto trailed 6-0 in the tiebreaker before rallying to win it, 10-8, and take the second set. They then won a 10-point tiebreaker, also by the score of 10-8, to close out the match.
“It’s a pretty solid showing,” said Kris Kwinta, Cal’s Peter Wright Director of Men’s Tennis. “They pretty incredibly came back from 0-6 down in the breaker and several match points down to come back and win.”
On Saturday at Hellman, the young Cal duo defeated Nevada’s Pedro Liborio and Gregoire Valente, 8-5, in the doubles round of 16 and then beat Santa Clara’s Lukas Maskow and Alexander Watanabe Eriksson, 8-5, in the quarterfinals.
Also on Saturday, the two Bears advanced to Sunday’s singles quarterfinals when Irwanto bested Maskow, 6-4, 6-4, and Stepanov beat San Francisco’s Moritz Hoffmann, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2.
In Sunday’s singles quarters, the Bears faced the same two Tigers they had beaten in doubles earlier in the day. But the outcomes were reversed. Irwanto fell to Das, 6-3, 6-3, and, in the last match of the regional event at Cal, Stepanov lost to Silva, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3. Those results qualified Das and Silva for the ITA Super Regionals, slated for Oct. 20-23 at Stanford.
“To not win one of those two singles matches was a little disappointing,” Kwinta said. “But, overall, we had some good matches here at regionals and gained some experience for the guys for sure going forward.”
Other Bears had previously secured spots at super regionals, with Carl Emil Overbeck, Derrick Chen and Alex Chang set to join Stepanov and Irwanto on The Farm. Via super regionals, players will attempt to qualify for the ITA National Fall Championships…
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