The Linfield men's tennis team picked up a narrow win on Sunday afternoon, beating the Cal Lutheran Kingsmen 5-4 in Rutschman Fieldhouse.
 
The Wildcats (2-2) nearly pulled off the doubles sweep before battling through a competitive singles slate with the Kingsmen (2-1) that saw four matches go to a third set.
 
DOUBLES
Linfield got on the board first in the No. 3 flight as Matous Young and Alexander Rosenquist picked up their first win as a team this season with an 8-3 win over Cal Lutheran's Raphael Simon and Jakob Buhler.
 
In the top flight Seth Lee and Rogue Stone won their third consecutive match with an 8-6 win over Ethan Sherwood and Loup Sudre, putting the 'Cats in the drivers seat with two wins in doubles.
 
The Wildcats nearly completed the doubles sweep in the No. 2 flight but fell just short, as Cal Lutheran's Andy Ai and James Truon outlasted Cameron Paulsen and Haven Hepton in a tiebreaker to win 8-7 (7-3).
 
SINGLES
Leading 2-1 after doubles, Linfield flexed their conditioning in singles, earning singles wins in three matches that went to a third set.
 
All third sets were played as best-to-10 tiebreakers.
 
The lone three-set match that went to Cal Lutheran was in the No. 1 flight, with Sherwood holding off Lee in the third after Lee had dominated the second, Sherwood winning the match 6-2, 0-6, 10-6.
 
Stone immediately countered with a win in a grueling No. 2 singles contest, beating Ai 7-5, 3-6, 10-6, while Rosenquist held on in the third flight 6-3, 3-6, 10-4 against Simon to bring Linfield within one win of clinching.
 
It was the freshman Hepton who clinched the win on the day for Linfield while picking up his first collegiate singles win with a narrow 6-3, 2-6, 10-8 over Cal Lutheran's Jake Anderson in the No. 5 flight.
 
The Kingsmen's two remaining singles wins came in the fourth and sixth flights, where Sudre beat Paulsen 6-4, 6-4 and Truon beat Abhi Acharya 6-1, 6-2.
 
The win was Linfield's first over a program from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, one of Division-III's preeminent tennis conferences, since Feb. 2, 2016 at Occidental.
 
NEXT
Linfield will host an exhibition against the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds on Sunday, Feb. 25 before beginning Northwest Conference competition on March 2 in McMinnville against Willamette.
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