Arimilli/Martin Earn Two Straight-Set Wins to Advance to ITA Cup Championship

ROME, Ga. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's tennis doubles team of Nathan Arimilli and Philip Martin dominated its quarterfinal and semifinal matchups on Friday afternoon at the Rome Tennis Center, advancing to the ITA Cup Division III Championship match, which will be held on Saturday at 11:30 noon local time (8:30 a.m. Pacific).

Arimilli/Martin defeated the fourth seed from Middlebury of Aidan Harris and Noah Laber by a 6-2, 6-4 final in the quarters in their first match on Friday, and then took down the Emory team of Andrew Esses and Sahil Raina 6-3, 6-2 in the semifinals. They will move on to tomorrow's Division III championship match against the Williams team of Peter Frelinghuysen and Matthew Kandel, who won a tight 6-3, 7-5 semifinal on Friday.

The Stag duo becomes the first CMS rookies (Martin is a sophomore, but didn't play last year due to the pandemic) to advance to the ITA Cup championship since 2005, when Guillaume Schils and Lawrence Wang won the title. William Ellison and David Oehm won the following year in 2006 as juniors. 

The Williams semifinal win avoided a possible interesting subplot to the championship as they defeated a doubles team from Trinity (Texas) that included Christian Settles, the son of CMS head coach Paul Settles, who now doesn't have to coach against his own son in a national title match (although CMS and Trinity did meet in the NCAA Regional finals in 2019, which the Stags won 5-0). 

In the consolation draw in singles, Ethan Carroll earned a 6-4, 6-1 win over Cole Lindwall of Wisconsin-Whitewater, while Robert Liu had his final consolation match canceled after going 1-1 in the main draw, opening with a straight-set win and then falling in a tight three-setter (7-5 in the third) to Stan Morris of Middlebury.