Thursday afternoon, 9th seeds Vahid Mirzadeh of Wellington FL and Nick Rinks of Kalamazoo MI became the first 16 doubles team to reach the semifinals by outlasting opponents Andrew Orban of Fayetteville NC and Eric Riley of Rancho Santa Fe CA , the 13th seeds, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(8) in a dramatic third set tiebreak. The duo seemed bound for being upset when both players dropped serve and trailed Orban and Riley 4-0 in the third set. ?Mirzadeh and Rinks were able to turn their serve receive game around just in time as they clawed their way back into the set. Orban and Riley served for the set at 6-5, but Mirzadeh and Rinks broke to force the tiebreak.

Both teams appeared nervous throughout the tiebreak. Mirzadeh began the breaker with a double-fault, and he and Rinks trailed 4-2 at the first changeover. Again, he and Rinks raised the level of their return game to build a 6-5 lead with Rinks serving for match point. Two nervous volley errors off Rinks' racquet gave Orban and Riley their first match point leading 7-6. Mirzadeh crushed a second serve return to keep his team in the match. Facing a second match point at 8-7, Mirzadeh won both points on his serve to earn his team's second match point. He converted this one with yet another serve return that Orban and Riley could not get back. The lengthy match ended a marathon day for Rinks, as earlier in the day he won two tough singles matches in the 16 Feed-In draw.

8th seeds Scoville Jenkins of Atlanta GA and Nathan Sachs of Alpharetta GA pulled off the upset of the evening, dispatching 2nd seeds Jamie Friedland of Glen Cove NY and Brandon Davis of Austin TX in an exciting straight set victory 7-6(3), 7-5.

Also getting in on the upset action, 10th seeds Alex Kuznetsov of Richboro PA and Michael Johnson of Bradenton FL easily handled the 3rd seeds Philip Kao of Cupertino CA and Eric Roberson of Sacramento CA 6-1, 6-4.

11th seeds Adam Loucks of Irvine CA and Brandon Wai of San Diego CA managed to avoid the upset bug as they ended the Cinderalla run of the last unseeded team in the draw, Brian Hull of Southlake TX and Chong Wang of Corpus Christi TX. Loucks and Wai won the quarterfinal match 6-1, 6-2.

The 16 doubles semifinals are slated for Friday at 2:30 PM at Stowe Stadium. For a look at the matchups, click here. The 18 doubles semifinals are scheduled to follow at 3:30 PM at Stowe Stadium. For those matchups, click here.

Source: Matt