Tag: Andrew Lutschaunig

Ohio State men’s tennis doubles team wins national championship

Congrats to Andrew and James, National Champions! #GoBucks

It wasn’t easy for [autotag]Ohio State[/autotag] men’s doubles tennis team of [autotag]Andrew Lutschaunig[/autotag] and [autotag]James Trotter[/autotag] facing off against a Texas Longhorns duo with a championship on the line.

The Buckeye duo battled the Longhorns’ Cleeve Harper and Eliot Spizzirri hard with the pair in burnt orange giving it their all, but eventually, Ohio State outlasted them and hoisted a championship trophy. Although OSU fell just short of the team title, Lutschaunig and Trotter helped the Buckeyes come home with some hardware nonetheless.

Ohio State won the first set 6-4, then took the second to capture the title. The senior pair closed out their Buckeye career in style, even though their ultimate goal was not quite attained bringing all the hardware home with their teammates.

Congrats to Andrew and James on an amazing Buckeye career and finishing it off with a championship.

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Ohio State men’s tennis doubles team will play for national championship

The duo will have a shot at a national title on Saturday! #GoBucks

The Ohio State men’s tennis team finished just a wee bit short of taking home a national championship, but one of the Buckeyes’ doubles teams has another shot to add a national title trophy to the case.

And it came in come-from-behind fashion.

The doubles team of Andrew Lutschaunig and James Trotter did battle with Pepperdine’s Daniel De Jonge and Tim Zeitvogel and had to pull off a thrilling comeback. The OSU duo started out losing the first set 6-3 and had to work hard to win the second set 7-6 in a tiebreaker by a score of 7-2.

That forced a super-tiebreaker for the third set to determine the winner and Ohio State capitalized on its momentum to win that pretty handily by a score of 10-4. Just like that, a ticket had been punched to the national championship game on Saturday opposite the team of Cleeve Harper and Eliot Spizzirri of Texas.

Match time is set for 11:30 a.m. ET.

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Buckeyes go 0-4 in opening round of Columbus Challenger

Four current Ohio State Buckeyes competed at the Columbus Challenger professional tennis tournament this week.

The Columbus Challenger is taking place at the Ohio State University this week. As I’ve explained before, the Columbus Challenger series is an excellent opportunity, both for American tennis players in general, Ohio State’s tennis program, and tennis fans around Columbus.

Ohio State hosts multiple Challenger Tour events throughout the year. The Challenger Tour is the second-highest professional men’s tennis tour, right below the ATP World Tour. Challenger tournaments are usually filled by players ranked from 100-400 in the world. Ohio State uses the Challengers in Columbus to increase fan interest, to help with recruiting, and to give current (and former) Buckeyes the chance to compete against some of the best in the world.

Four current members of the Men’s Tennis team were given entry to the Challenger. Unfortunately for them, none managed to advance to the second round this time. However, all of them performed admirably against some of the top opponents–certainly a higher-caliber opponent than you’ll see in most college matchups.

John McNally, likely the most pro-ready Buckeye, took World No. 275 Roberto Quiroz to two tiebreaks. However, the Cincinnati couldn’t win either of them, so he lost 7-6 7-6. Freshman phenom Cannon Kingsley also took Lloyd Glasspool to a first-set tiebreak, but Kingsley lost the tiebreak and the second set as well. Redshirt freshman Andrew Lutschaunig was given a qualifying spot, and he had to take on World No. 208 Zhe Li. Lutschaunig was also able to force a first-set tiebreak, but he lost it and the second set as well. This morning, Justin Boulais fell to World No. 270 Guilherme Clezar in straight sets as well.

So while current Buckeyes might not have won a single set against their four opponents, they all played tough and impressed against top-caliber competition. They might not have earned any ranking points and I’m sure all would have loved to have advanced, but this is a great experience and they played really well.

Former Buckeyes J.J. Wolf and Mikael Torpegaard–each former champions of Columbus Challengers–received first-round byes and are still in the tournament. Wolf begins his tournament today (Tuesday) against World No. 273 James Ward, while Torpegaard begins tomorrow.