Anteater Tennis Team Wins Marathon Match

The UC Irvine men’s tennis team, ranked 21st in the nation, opened the season with a 5-3 nonconference victory over No. 23 New Mexico in a match that took nearly eight hours to complete.

Anteaters Neel Grover and Charles Wheeler won in doubles, 6-3, 7-5, to end the match, which started at 5 p.m. Sunday in New Mexico’s new indoor tennis stadium, which has only three courts. The match ended at 1 a.m. Monday.

Irvine won four of six singles matches. For the Anteaters, Brett Hansen-Dent defeated Gene Carswell, 6-2, 6-4; Charles Wheeler beat Garett Prinz, 7-6, 6-4; Fred Bach stopped Coulter Wright, 7-6, 6-0, and Marco Zuniga beat Jason DeFalco, 7-6, 6-7, 6-1.