Jangbahadur Wins ITA Southeast Regional Singles Championship; Tartan Pair Play in Doubles Final

(FREDERICKSBURG, Va.) – The Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis team competed at the ITA Southeast Regional from Friday, September 29 through Sunday, October 1 at the University of Mary Washington. The freshmen pair of Daniel Kong and Raghav Jangbahadur reached the doubles final while they faced each other in the singles semifinals with Jangbahadur moving on and eventually winning the championship match.

Doubles

• All three Tartan doubles teams won their round of 64 match.
• Kong and Jangbahadur reached the finals after eliminating the number seven seed, number four seed, and number one seed. The pair topped Swarthmore's top-seeded duo of Michael Melnikov and Purushotham Koduri by an 8-5 score in the semifinals.
• Senior Derek Wong and sophomore Akshay Joshi also advanced to the semifinals as a three seed with an 8-7 (7-3) victory over a Christopher Newport University pair in the quarterfinals.
• Wong and Joshi fought hard but fell 8-4 to the number two seed of senior Rishi Charan Shankar and senior Peter Leese of Mary Washington.
• Charan Shankar and Leese then topped Kong and Jangbahadur, 8-2, in the final.

Singles

• Five Tartans enjoyed first-round singles victories including Justin Yi and Jonathan Gu in the B1 Flight.
• In the Championships Flight, senior Nicholas Wernink, Jangbahadur, and Kong were all seeded.
• Wernink won his round of 64 match by a 6-4, 6-2 score before falling in the round of 32.
• Kong and Jangbahadur won twice on Friday and twice on Saturday to meet each other in the semifinals on Sunday.
• Kong had a strong third-set tiebreaker victory against the one-seed, Melnikov, by a 0-6, 6-3, 1-0 (10-7) score in the quarterfinals.
• Jangbahadur breezed through the three seed of Charan Shankar by a 6-0, 6-3 score.
• Jangbahadur got the better of Kong with a 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 win and went on to defeat Washington and Lee University's Evan Erb, a junior, after dropping the first set 6-2, with a 6-3 second set win and a 10-6 tiebreaker win.

Notes

• The doubles finals appearance by Kong and Jangbahadur marked the first for a Tartan pair since 2018 when seniors Chaz Downing and Daniel Levine won the crown.
• The last time a Tartan freshman was in the singles championship was in 2016 when Michael Rozenvasser won the title.
• Jangbahadur's championship marks the eighth in program history and first since Downing's win in 2018.

Next

Kong and Jangbahadur will compete in the doubles bracket while Jangbahadur will also play in the singles bracket of the ITA Cup in Rome, Georgia, from Thursday, October 12 through Sunday, October 15.