CARY, N.C. – South Carolina men’s tennis junior Lucas Andrade da Silva and sophomore Sean Daryabeigi advanced to the singles main draw round of 16 at the ITA Carolina Regional Championships at Cary Tennis Park on Friday. The duo’s advance highlighted action for the Gamecocks, who added five other wins on the opening day of singles and doubles main draw play.
After cruising to a 6-3, 6-1 win over North Carolina’s ivan Dreycopp in the opening round, da Silva battled out a three-set victory in the second round. The Gamecocks’ junior dropped his opening set to Luca Pow of Wake Forest, but won the clutch points in a second-set tiebreak to set up the comeback that yielded a 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory.
Daryabeigi was in a battle with Coastal Carolina’s Curzio Manucci in the first set but pulled ahead with a solid tiebreak before finishing off the 7-6 (4), 6-3 win quickly in the second. In the second round, the Floridian turned in his second ranked win of the season with a workmanlike 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 97 Ioannis Xilas of Wake Forest. Daryabeigi will face eighth-seed No. 51 Wissam Abderrahman of Clemson on Saturday.
No. 117 Jelani Sarr also advanced out of the tournament’s first round with an efficient 6-2, 6-2 win over Hugo Hidalgo Vega of NC Central. He took the first set in his second-round match against Saahith Jayaraman of Duke but fell behind in the second and could not complete his comeback, falling 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
Freshman Atakan Karahan, whose two wins Thursday moved him into the main draw, shook off a tough loss to No. 90 Martin Borisiouk of NC State in the opening round to post a three-set victory in consolation action. Freshman Gabe Avram picked up a 7-6 (5), 6-0 win over Queens’ Laurenz Blickwede in consolation play as well.
In doubles, No. 82 da Silva and Sarr, who are the tournament’s eight seed, advanced after a hard-fought 8-7 (6) win over NC State’s William Manning and Jules Leroux. The Gamecock duo will take on Joaquin Guilleme and Nikola Parichkov of Wake Forest on Saturday afternoon in the round of 32.
Complete draws, schedules and results for the ITA Carolina Regional Championships will be post on the ITA Tournament Page. Matches are streaming live via PlaySight.
Under the new format for NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships, players and doubles teams in the ITA Regional Championships can qualify right into the NCAA Championships bracket. The two singles finalists in each region will punch their ticket…