Junior Mikhail Bekker ended one streak to keep another one going for the Penn men's tennis team.
By beating Princeton's Darius Craton -- a player Bekker lost to twice during his freshman year and hadn't beaten in his career -- Bekker helped Penn beat Princeton 6-1 to open its Ivy League season Friday. The victory extended the Quakers' winning streak to 10 matches, making this the teams' longest stretch in 22 years.
Bekker found a way to neutralize Craton's power to pull out a 6-2, 7-6 (4) win at No. 2 to give Penn a comfortable 3-0 lead over Princeton (4-9, 0-1 Ivy). Bekker also won his No. 2 doubles match 8-5, partnering with freshman Jonathan Boym.
"I was slicing here and there, mixing it up and letting [Craton] miss," Bekker said. "He hits really hard so he's going to make errors.
"As I get older and get more experience, I'm not going to make mistakes I made in the past," Bekker added.
Singles play was solid for the Quakers (13-4, 1-0) all around, and the extra conditioning the team has been doing recently paid off. Three of the matches went to three sets, and there were four tiebreakers played in all.
Sophomore Joseph Lok, who beat Hans Plukas 4-6, 6-1, 6-2 at No. 4, said that he probably wouldn't have been able to win his match had it been played at the beginning of the season.
"I've been putting in a lot of time at the gym, and I'm able to run down more balls," said Lok, who added that he's lost 20 pounds since the National Indoor Team Championships in February.
Sophomore Jason Pinsky also played a tough match at No. 1, beating Sratha Saengsuwarn 7-6 (6), 6-1. In a tightly contested first set that featured two players battling from the baseline for over an hour and 20 minutes, the sophomore finally won the tiebreaker by hitting a service winner down the middle.
"Initially, I was just trying to get a feel for the conditions: the wind, the sun," Pinsky said. "And he came out firing. I eventually got comfortable and was able to play my game."
Head coach Mark Riley, who noted that the first set could have gone either way, also stressed the importance of being strong enough physically to grind out long matches.
"After the first set, [Saengsuwarn] looked gassed," he said.
"Pinsky just stepped up and got stronger. Even if we lost the first set, we would come back in the second," added Riley, referring to the matches played by Lok and Boym, who posted the lone Quakers loss on the day, falling 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
Lok and Pinsky also teamed up to win their No. 1 doubles match 8-5.
While the final score indicated a lopsided matchup, Riley was quick to warn against complacency.
"This is just another tough Ivy match," he said. "They're all going to be like this.
"As long as there are no quick outs, no quick losses, we'll be okay."
The Quakers host Yale (7-6) this Friday at 2 p.m.
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