The No. 42 University of Wisconsin men’s tennis team won its first home match in February, beating cross-state rival Marquette 6-1. In over three hours of competition at Nielsen Tennis Stadium, the Badgers evened their record at 5-5.
Wisconsin swept all three doubles matches, led by the No. 26 duo of sophomore Luke Rassow-Kantor and senior Jeremy Sonkin. That pair won the No. 1 doubles match 8-7.
The second doubles pair of sophomore Moritz Baumann and senior Nolan Polley won 8-4 against sophomore Mark Rutherford and junior Trent Hagen of Marquette. Polley and Baumann are the No. 46 doubles team in the country.
Sonkin was the only Wisconsin player to lose his singles match, but he put up a fight against Golden Eagle junior Stephen Shao. He won the first set 6-4 but lost 7-6 in the second and 10-8 in the third.
Hagen lost his No. 1 singles match to Polley 6-3, 6-1. Wisconsin had similar success at No. 2 singles, where sophomore Marek Michalicka came away with a 6-4, 6-2 win over sophomore Dusan Medan.
The Czech Republic native has yet to lose a match this season and improved his record to 9-0. Michalicka’s win gave Wisconsin its fourth point of the day, which assured that Greg Van Emburgh’s squad would come away with the victory.
The closest Badger win came in senior Felipe Bellido’s match against Marquette senior Brett Binkley. Bellido fell behind 5-4 in the first game but came back to win the final three games. Binkley took the first game of the second set, but Bellido ripped off six straight wins to take the match.
Freshman Peter Marrack beat sophomore Niko Boulieris in two sets but needed a rally to stave off a third. Boulieris was up 5-4 in the second, but Marrack sent it into a tiebreaker and prevailed 7-6.
Baumann is the team’s only ranked singles player and is considered the No. 53 player in the country. The German, however, was not in any of the singles matches on Wednesday. Baumann held the top singles spot for the previous five matches.
The final win for Wisconsin came from Michael Muskievicz with a score of 6-1, 6-1. Rutherford lost the match, which was the No. 5 singles for Marquette.
Badger freshman Michael Dierberger also was not in the singles rotation despite playing singles in the previous seven matches. He won his first five matches of the season but lost the last two. Dierberger did contribute, however, teaming with Muskievicz to win the No. 3 doubles match 8-2.
Entering Wednesday, the Badgers had lost five straight matches, all to teams ranked No. 43 or higher. They have not beaten a ranked team since last May when they defeated the then-No. 27 Washington Huskies in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Golden Eagles entered Nielsen Tennis Stadium with a 7-3 record and had gone 5-1 in their last six matches.
UW will get more than two weeks off before opening Big Ten play against Northwestern on March 8. Last season Wisconsin lost 3-4 to the No. 45 Wildcats in Evanston.
—uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
