SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The Union College men's tennis team had a successful first day of competition at the ITA Northeast Regional Championships, held on Friday at Skidmore College's McCaffrey-Wagman Tennis Center.
 
First-year Simon Philip advanced out of the Round of 64 with a comeback victory over Daniel Arcari of Drew University, dropping the first set by a 6-3 score before coming back to take the second, 6-2, and winning the supertiebreaker, 10-6. He continued his run with another come-from-behind win over Haocheng Liu from the University of Rochester, posting a 6-7 (4-7), 6-3, 10-7 victory to reach tomorrow's Round of 16.
 
Sophomores Jesus Sosa and Arhan Gupta both fell in the first round on Friday, with Sosa losing a 6-0, 6-1 match to Hamilton College's Lleyton Mendieta and Gupta coming up short to The College of New Jersey's Alberto Thomas, 6-1, 6-4.
 
In the doubles main draw, Sosa and Gupta dropped an 8-1 match in the first round to Ithaca College's Gijs Fidler and Luis Crespo.
 
In the "B" Singles draw, junior Daniel Saxe earned three straight wins to reach tomorrow's final. He started out by battling past Joseph Xia of Rochester in a supertiebreaker, 6-4, 6-7 (4-7), 10-6. He followed up by besting Juan Paredes of Baruch College, 6-1, 6-3, and then used a pair of 6-4 sets to get past Rochester's Tony Xu.
 
Also in the "B" Singles bracket, sophomore Vivaan Gupta cruised past RPI's Debarshi Sen with a pair of 6-1 sets before faling to Skidmore's Mahen Bitkuri, 6-1, 6-2, in the quarterfinals. Junior Shreyas Kode also reached a supertiebreaker in his opening match against Ithaca's Alex Mazza, but came up just short in a 3-6, 6-3, 10-4 defeat.
 
In "B" Doubles action, Kode and first-year Alain Uzelac started off with an 8-5 win over TCNJ's Curtis Gruber and Olufela Fieulleteau, and then outlasted the Skidmore tandem of Bitkuri and Bruce Lunder by a 8-7 (7-5) score to advance to tomorrow's semifinals.
 
The Garnet Chargers will continue play in Saratoga on Saturday beginning at 9 a.m.