Rola and Buchanan On To The Doubles Final – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/25/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Sept. 25, 2015
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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Former NCAA doubles champions Blaz Rola and Chase Buchanan will vie for their second Challenger doubles title in as many weeks after a dominating 6-4, 6-1 victory over Quentin Halys and Joshua Milton on Friday.
Rola and Buchanan will take on Mitchell Krueger and Eric Quigley on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. in the Columbus Challenger doubles final. They are coming off a doubles title at the Challenger event in Cary, N.C., last week.
“We’re happy to get through and we played pretty well,” said Buchanan. “It’s nice to get to a final in a tournament, especially in our home city. At this point, I’m pretty confident after the last seven matches we’ve played. So we’re trying to continue the momentum we’ve had from those and play well and compete hard and hopefully things go well.”
Rola and Buchanan went up an early break in the first set and used a strong service game to take the first set 6-4. Then in the second, they broke Halys and Milton on their first two games to grab a strangle hold on the match. They would then finish the second set with a 6-1 victory and head to their second-straight final.
Krueger and Mitchell advanced to the finals by defeated the other Buckeye tandem of Peter Kobelt and Connor Smith on Friday. The match could not have started out any better for the Buckeyes as they broke Krueger and Quigley in their first two service games and would win the first set 6-1.
But Krueger and Quigley returned the favor by breaking the Buckeyes serve in the very first game of the second set to take a quick lead. They would hold that lead the rest of the set and would force a super tie-breaker to decide the match.
In the super-breaker, the only mini-break was won by Krueger and Quigley and they would go on to win the match 10-8. The loss was the first at the VTC for Kobelt and Smith, who were making their Challenger doubles debut.
Buchanan started his day with a quarterfinals singles match against Dennis Novikov. Like Rola and Buchanan, Novikov is coming off a Challenger title last week in Cary, N.C., and has been carrying that confidence with him this week.
The big serve of Novikov dominated the first set and he would take a 6-4 victory. The second set was on serve until Novikov went up a break at 5-4 and then served out the match for the 6-4 victory. Buchanan had just one break chance in the match.
