For the Wildcats, a weekend at home was exactly what they needed to revive their fall season.
Northwestern peppered the draw with several comeback wins at the Wildcat Invitational, highlighted by impressive performances from senior Eric Spector and freshmen Alberto Zanotti and Nikhil Jayashankar.
Freshman Alberto Zanotti opened the tournament with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Zeyad Montasser, utilizing his lefty serve and aggressive play to top the Western Michigan University senior.
Despite falling in the next round, Zanotti went on to play his best match of the tournament in a consolation match against Sven Kasper, one of DePaul University’s top players.
After dropping the first set in a tiebreaker, Zanotti fought back to take the second set 6-4. Finding himself behind again, by a margin of 2-5 in the third set super-tiebreaker, Zanotti won eight consecutive points to complete his win, finishing the match with a winning forehand return.
“I never thought I would have won the match in the way I won it,” Zanotti said. “But I had no pressure. That’s what helped.”
On the doubles court, Zanotti found even greater success, partnering with fellow freshman Nikhil Jayashankar to go 3-0 for the weekend.
“This is our first time playing together, and we barely ever played in practice, but we mesh pretty well together,” Jayashankar said. “It’s good to play with someone who has a lot of high energy to get you going.”
Though the two teammates have very different styles of play, the freshmen found a way to work together successfully.
In the second round, Zanotti and Jayashankar looked to be out of the match after falling behind a break against Roman Turtygin and Maksym Bartiuk of Northern Illinois University. But the duo was able to turn things around, breaking back in the pivotal tenth game and going on to win four consecutive games to take the match 8-5.
“(Jayashankar) played amazing and his serves were so good,” Zanotti said. “Between me and him in the doubles, he was the one who put it up.”
Jayashankar also posted some impressive results in singles, winning a marathon third-set super tiebreaker 16-14 in his second-round match against Westen Michigan’s Simon Bloomberg despite dropping the first set.
Spector posted two comeback wins of his own in singles play. In the second round against Bartiuk, Spector fought back from a set down to take the third set 10-3, closing out the match with a second-serve ace.
While he fell short in his final match on Sunday, Spector was happy with his performance.
“It’s just a matter of getting loose and getting into the match since I haven’t played as much as I would have liked for quite some time,” he said. “That match toughness, it takes a little while to find.”
Coach Arvid Swan was very complimentary of Spector’s performance, especially given the sustained injuries the senior has had to battle with.
“It’s basically been two years since he’s been healthy,” Swan said. “His freshman year he won probably 80, 85 percent of his matches and helped us get to the [NCAA] tournament so he’s been through a lot … I’ve got a lot of respect for Eric.”
This weekend, the team will head to the Big Ten Singles Championship in Iowa City, where seven of the team’s ten players will compete in the final tournament of the fall season.
