ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Cornell men's tennis team opens its 2025-26 Ivy League season on the road when it travels to face No. 37 Yale on Saturday, April 4 before heading to Brown on Sunday, April 5. Both matches will start at 1 p.m. and be streamed live on Stretch Internet.
Cornell, ranked No. 34 in the latest ITA rankings, is 12-2 on the season with ranked wins over Louisville, Yale, Penn (twice), and most recently Memphis and Middle Tennessee. Cornell has had nearly a two week break since sweeping both teams from the Volunteer State at Reis Tennis Center.
Sophomore
Rodrigo Fernandes, ranked No. 80 nationally, is 19-7 on the season from the top spot.
Eric Verdes (7-7) and
Petar Teodorovic (13-6) have also excelled in the top-half of the lineup, while
Rethin Pranav Senthil Kumar (17-5),
Felipe Pinzon (12-7) and
Aman Sharma (9-5) have done damage in the bottom half. The doubles tandem of Senthil Kumar and
Rushil Khosla is 14-4 on the season and ranked No. 84 nationally, while the NCAA qualifying pair of Pinzon and Teodorovic is off to a 13-3 start. Fernandes and
Eric Verdes sit No. 46 nationally in doubles with an 9-3 record. Big Red head coach Silviu Tanasiou sports a 198-108 career record (.647) entering the weekend, and the program's all-time winningest coach will attempt to become the first Big Red tennis coach to reach 200 victories. He has four NCAA tournament appearances with first-round wins each year.
The Big Red and the Bulldogs, meeting for the second time this season following Cornell's 4-3 victory in February at the ECAC Indoor Championships in Princeton, will square off at the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center. While the Bulldogs lead the all-time series 55-25, Cornell has won 14 of the past 15 matchups dating back to 2014, including six in a row in New Haven. Interim head coach Eduardo Ugalde is led at the top by No. 41 Vignesh Gogineni and the 74th-ranked doubles team of Gogineni and Edward Liao. Yale is 14-5 on the year with wins over Arkansas, Oklahoma State and Purdue. They got off to a running Ivy start following a 6-1 victory at Brown this past weekend.
The Bears are 15-8 this season under the direction of head coach Mike Fried and will play at the Varsity Tennis Courts. Cornell has dominated the series recently with 15 consecutive meetings, though Brown still holds the all-time advantage at 38-34. The Big Red has won six consecutive matchups in Providence. Included among Brown's 15 wins so far this season are Boston College, Temple, Richmond, Navy and Georgetown. Ivan Sodan (15-6), Lukas Phimvongsa (17-6) and Noah Hernandez (13-10) have spent a majority of the time at the top of the lineup, with Sodan and Phimvongsa also playing in the top doubles slot in the lineup.
