EDWARDSVILLE – A 40-minute lightning delay prior to the start of the match didn’t deter Nicolas Alvarez of Peru and Liam Caruana of Italy Friday evening.
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The duo battled American pair Nicolas Meister and Evan Zhu all evening as the doubles teams battled all evening for the doubles championship of the $25,000 USTA Pro Circuit Edwardsville Futures tournament presented by the EGHM Foundation at the Edwardsville High School tennis center.
In the end, Alvarez/Caruana came out with a 6-7 (8-10), 7-6 (7-3), 10-7 win before an enthusiastic crowd for the doubles title of the tournament, which took place following the singles quarterfinals of the tournament. Last week in the semifinals of the Ursula Beck Futures tournament in Decatur, Alvarez/Caruana lost to Meister, who was playing with a different partner
“We had two great, talented teams who wanted to win the championship,” said tournament director Dave Lipe. “It was a hotly contested, but sportsmanlike, match; it was a lot of fun for everyone and made for a great day of tennis.”
It was a tight match all the way through; neither team could get a comfortable lead, Meister/Zhu finally finding a way to shake off Alvarez/Caruana in the tiebreaker of the opening set to get the win and the lead; Alvarez/Caruana kept pressing on as both teams couldn’t shake off the other in the second set before Alvarez/Caruana managed to send the second set into a tiebreaker and even the match with a 7-3 win in the tiebreak to force a deciding set, which was played as a first-to-10-by-two format.
Alvarez/Caruana got out to an early lead and a 6-1 lead in the super-tiebreaker before Meister/Zhu pulled to within a point a couple of times before Alvarez/Caruana took control and pulled out to enough of a lead to win the championship 10-7.
In Friday’s singles quarterfinal matches, Alvarez scored a 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 win over top-seeded Ryan Shane to advance into today’s semifinals, while American Sebastian Korda, the son of 1998 Australian Open champ Petr Korda, advanced with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-0 win over Paul Oosterbaan of the USA, to get to the semis; Korda, who won this year’s Australian Open junior boys title, was defeated for the Ursula Beck singles crown by Alvarez last week.
On the other side of the bracket, Argentine Axel Geller eliminated Sebastein Boltz of France 6-4, 6-4, while Maxime Cressy of France reached the semifinal against Geller with a 6-3, 7-5 win over American Alfredo Perez.
Geller faces Cressy in today’s first semifinal match beginning at 10 a.m., with the Korda-Alvarez semifinal taking place following the Geller-Cressy match no earlier than 11 a.m.; Saturday’s winners will meet for the singles crown at 11 a.m. Sunday. Today’s matches will be played on Court 2 of the EHS tennis center.
Today is Family Day at the Futures, with family activities available throughout the day at the venue. Real-time scoring and updates are available at www.edwardsvillefutures.com and at www.itftennis.com.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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