NCAA Tennis Championships : Garrow Survives, but Two More Seeded Players Fall

Brian Garrow promised himself that he was going to have more fun at this year’s National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tennis championships, but early Thursday morning it didn’t look that way.

The No. 1 player from UCLA, who reached the singles final at this event a year ago, was facing elimination in the second round against unseeded Greg Failla of USC.

Failla had won the first set, 7-5, and held two match points in the second against his Pacific 10 Conference rival, whom he had beaten in their last meeting. But Garrow fought off both match points, took the second set, 7-5, and then went on to win the third set, 6-0, to advance to today’s quarterfinals.

Garrow will play Georgia’s Francisco Montana, who upset top-seeded MaliVai Washington of Michigan in the first round and took three sets to defeat Vince Van Gelderen of Clemson on Thursday.

Doug Eisenman of California and Kip Brady of UC Santa Barbara pulled off the upsets of the day against the No. 2 and No. 6 players, respectively, leaving the tournament without its top six seeded players.

Eisenman needed to win a second-set tiebreaker to take a 3-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 marathon over No. 2 Mike Brown of Arkansas.

Brady also lost his first set but came back to win over sixth-seeded Adam Malik of Kentucky, 5-7, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4.

In other singles matches Thursday, Trevor Kronemann of UC Irvine advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Clint Banducci, Texas Christian’s No. 1 player. Bryon Black of USC also advanced with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Brian Devening of Southern Methodist.

Falling out of the tournament Thursday were Buff Farrow of UCLA, who was upset by Steven Jung of Nebraska, 6-4, 6-2, and Eric Amend of USC, who lost Clemson’s John Sullivan, 6-1, 6-4. Jung is from Hacienda Heights.

Doubles play began Thursday and, as expected, top-seeded Garrow and Gailbraith easily advanced past Mario Pacheco and Ged Schwing of Louisiana State, 6-1, 6-4.

Both of Irvine’s doubles teams advanced as Mike Briggs and Trevor Kronemann beat Jamie Booras and Dave Randall of Mississippi, 6-4, 6-4, and Mike Kaplan and Richard Lubner beat Jeff Neuman and Jack Solerno of Oklahoma State, 6-3, 7-5.