Griff '25 reaches singles and doubles finals at regional men's tennis tournaments

MADISON, NJ Hamilton College Connor Griff '25 reached the finals of the singles and doubles draws of the 2024 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Men's Division III Northeast Regional Championships, held September 27-29 at Drew University.

Griff and doubles partner Antonio Chavez '28 earned automatic qualification for the 2024 ITA Cup, hosted by the Rome Tennis Center in Rome, Georgia, beginning on Thursday, October 10. The four-day event features regional singles and doubles champions and finalists from NCAA Division II and Division III, NAIA and the junior college ranks. This is believed to be the first time Hamilton men's tennis athletes have qualified for the ITA Cup since the event's inaugural year in 1986.

Griff was the No. 2 seed in the singles draw. He started his run to the finals on Friday with a 6-4, 6-0 victory against Union College's Jesus Sosa in the first round and a 6-2, 6-2 win against Haocheng Liu of the University of Rochester. Griff continued his dominance Saturday with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Yuval Goodman of Skidmore College in the third round and a victory against Tsubasa Okada of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) by the same scores in the quarterfinals.

Griff made an epic comeback in Sunday morning's semi-final against RPI's Archit Yemula. After dropping the first set 1-6, Griff trailed 3-5 and Yemula had match point. Griff rallied to tie the set at 6-6 and force a tiebreak which he eventually won 15-13. He fought off at least a few more match points from Yemula on his way to victory in that epic tiebreak. Griff then dominated the third set with a 6-1 decision to clinch a spot in the final.

Unfortunately, Griff had to retire due to an injury before participating in the final. At that point, he had played a total of nine singles and doubles matches in three days.

Griff and Chavez were 8-4 winners against Mark Adler and David Cattan of Yeshiva University in the first round and defeated Ivan Kisic and Emiliano Pedrero of Ithaca College in the second round 8-5. On Saturday, they eliminated Hyat Oyer and Rahul Vallabhajosula of Hobart College 8-5 in the quarterfinals and defeated Brett Schuster and Alberto Thomas of The College of New Jersey 8-7 (7-5) in the semifinals.

In the semi-finals, Griff and Chavez led 6-3 before their opponents won three games in a row to tie the score at 6-6. Griff and Chavez held serve for a 7-6 lead and had match point on the next match, but Schuster and Thomas recovered and went to a tiebreaker. The TCNJ duo jumped out to a 5-3 lead during that tiebreaker, but Griff and Chavez ran off four straight hard-fought points to close out the match. Griff's injury forced them to withdraw from Sunday afternoon's final.

Tarun Korwar '27 played well over the weekend as he reached the quarter-finals in both singles and doubles. Korwar posted a 6-2, 6-2 victory against TCNJ's Aidan Twamley in the first round and defeated Rochester Institute of Technology's Yu Tanimoto 6-3, 6-2 in the second round. He started his Saturday with a straight-set victory (7-6, 6-0) over Edvin Strandberg of St. Lawrence University in the third round. Korwar's run ended in the quarterfinals against top seed Aiden Drover-Mattinen of RPI, 6-3, 6-2.

Korwar and Anson Anderson '26 posted an 8-5 victory against Joshua Chu and Rahul Ravi of Rochester in the first round. They outlasted a TCNJ duo 8-7 in the second round, including 7-4 in the tiebreak. Anderson and Korwar dropped an 8-5 decision to Skidmore's Fletcher King and Nika Mori in the quarterfinals.

Anderson advanced to the second round of the singles draw. He won 6–4 in the first set against Harry Zhang of Vassar College before Zhang withdrew from the match. Anderson was eliminated by Tasmay Shah of RPI with scores of 6-3 and 7-5.

Eerik Villem Aadamsoo '28 defeated Hobart's Nick Grosso in a first-round match that went to a super tiebreaker in the third set, 6-3, 0-6, 10-6. Aadamsoo was not so lucky in the second round, falling to RPI's Andy Zhu with scores of 6-3 and 7-5.

The regionals were the final event of the fall season for the Continentals. They will appear in court again in March 2025.