The Columbia men’s tennis team will host its first tournament of the fall, the annual Columbia Classic, on the Dick Savitt Tennis Center courts this weekend. This year’s tournament features 11 other teams, including Ivy League foes Princeton, Harvard, Penn, and Cornell. The Columbia Classic is an individual tournament, so wins can help individual players improve their rankings.
Representing Columbia in the singles draw will be Bogdan Borta, Mihai Nichifor, Haig Schneiderman, Ekin Sezgen, Rajeev Deb-Sen, Sho Matsumoto, Jon Chan, and Mike Bohnen. In the doubles draw, Columbia will send out teams of Nichifor and Schneiderman, Sezgen and Dan Urban, and Deb-Sen and Matsumoto. One name not featured in the draw for Columbia is junior standout Jon Wong, who is just returning from playing in the D’Novo All-American Championships earlier this week with teammate Bogdan Borta. Wong lost in the second round of the qualifying singles draw while Wong and Borta were defeated in the third round of the qualifying doubles draw.
The Columbia Classic should provide an opportunity for some fresh faces to gain valuable experience and confidence going into the spring Ivy League season. Sezgen, Schneiderman and Deb-Sen are all freshmen on the team, while Nichifor is a junior transfer from Manhattan College. Matsumoto is a sophomore looking to break into the lineup after playing sparingly last season.
The Lions have three players entered in the “A” draw for singles, with senior Bogdan Borta leading the field as the top seed. Borta opens against Alex Vuckovic from Princeton, Haig Schneiderman plays Moshe Levy from Binghamton, and junior Mihair Nichifor is slated to play Asaf Honig from St. John’s. In the “A” draw for doubles, Columbia also has the top seeded team—Nichifor and Schneiderman. The duo of Sezgen and Urban will be joining them in the draw as well.
Columbia enters its home tournament with plenty of momentum after dominating the field in the Princeton Invitational two weeks ago. Jon Wong and Mihai Nichifor faced off in an all-Columbia final, and Nichifor even upset the tournament’s number-one seed in the first round. Wong and Borta added another trophy to Columbia’s collection by winning the “A” draw for doubles. To top it all off, freshmen Haig Schneiderman advanced all the way to the finals of the “B” singles draw, before losing in three close sets.
Play at the Columbia Classic is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. on Friday and continue through Sunday at the Dick Savitt Tennis Center.
