NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Privateers were battle tested against a tough North Dakota Fighting Hawks team whom they fought valiantly against throughout the afternoon in a 4-1 loss on Thursday at the Privateer Tennis Center.
The Fighting Hawks ended the doubles point almost simultaneously with wins at flight two and three. After the Privateers scored a 6-3 win with
Carlos Melgosa and
Beltran Fernandez, North Dakota's other two pairs won their respective matches by 6-4 score lines within seconds of each other.
In singles, Melgosa was superb throughout his match. He got out to early leads in each of the first two sets including winning five of the first six games in his second set on the way to a 6-3, 6-2 win.
From there, North Dakota won the next three matches to take the bout on the day.
Kotaro Matsumura won a critical deuce point to avoid a first set tiebreak at flight four. He used that momentum to take an early lead in the second set and won 7-5, 6-2.
Darrsh Suresh Kumar was the next to finish for the Fighting Hawks. After dropping the first set, Kumar took early leads in the next two sets on his way to a 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory to put the road side up 3-1.
The finishing point was won in a tiebreak by Walker Valentine. He broke serve to stay in the second set and it was a grueling set with a lot of long points between he and
Peter Kieslinger all the way through a tiebreak.
Valentine jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the tiebreak but Kieslinger won the next three points before Valentine won another extended rally to hold on for a 6-3, 7-6 (4) win.
NEXT UP
The Privateers will face Omaha on Saturday at 11 a.m.
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