Doubles team of Manfredi Graziani and Aaron Sandler lifts Penn men’s tennis to new heights.
Wake Forest University’s DK Suresh and Andrew Delgado finished the season as the top-ranked doubles pairing in all of NCAA Division I men’s tennis. Suresh has already won several professional doubles titles and “will be a guy you’ll see on TV playing in Grand Slams,” says Penn men’s tennis coach Rich Bonfiglio.
Yet when that powerhouse duo went up against Penn’s doubles team of Manfredi Graziani W’26 and Aaron Sandler W’27 in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division I Men’s Tennis Championship last fall, Bonfiglio “liked our chances.” The Penn coach felt even more confident when his players rallied to win the second set and force a third-set tiebreaker.
“Manfredi in that breaker played unbelievable tennis, and Aaron complemented him really well,” Bonfiglio says. “Once we got to that point, it almost felt like destiny.”
Graziani and Sandler prevailed in the third-set tiebreaker, 10–7, to pull off the upset over Wake Forest and become the first doubles team in Penn history to advance to the final four of the NCAA Championships. And although their run ended in the semifinals, Penn’s dynamic duo continued their blistering form into the spring, going undefeated (which Bonfiglio notes is “almost impossible” since doubles matches are only one set) and leading the Quakers to the NCAA team tournament for just the second time in program history.
In its NCAA tourney appearance in early May, Penn was matched up against Stanford, who Bonfiglio calls “one of the most storied teams in college tennis,” at “one of the premier venues in our sport” in College Station, Texas. It was a memorable experience, even if it did end in a 4–1 loss for the Quakers—with Graziani and Sandler, naturally, securing Penn’s only victory. In yet another program first, the two were named All-Americans after the season.
“They were two of the guys who, from when we first came in as a coaching staff, really bought into what we preached,” says Bonfiglio, who was named Penn’s head coach in 2023. “I couldn’t have been happier for two more deserving guys.”
Bonfiglio had wanted to put the two together as a doubles team the prior year, but Sandler was recovering from an injury at the time. So they joined forces at the start of 2025–26 and almost immediately showcased their potential with several victories over power-conference teams at the ITA All-American Championships in September. “Right away when we started playing,” Sandler says, “it kind of just clicked.”
What made them click? To start, the two are really close friends, which “helped us on the court when we were playing,” notes Sandler. Graziani, the more emotional player, credits Sandler with “not taking anything personal” when he yells on the court. “When I play doubles with someone, I have really high expectations,” Graziani says. “And if they do something wrong, I’m like, Bro, stop this, do this, or do that. Aaron always took that super well.”
“Aaron’s a little calmer and even keeled,” Bonfiglio says. “Manfredi is definitely more energetic. How they were able to balance each other out, personality-wise and energy-wise, was really good.” They also balanced each other out well “from a shot-making perspective,” the coach adds, with Sandler providing great serves and Manfredi, a lefty, being able to hit all of the shots from the baseline and the net. “They just trusted each other,” Bonfiglio says. “And, as they played together more and more, they just knew what the other player was going to do, without having to talk about it.”
Their run to the NCAA semifinals in November was certainly a top highlight because “we were able to get the recognition we deserved,” says Graziani. But it almost never came to fruition with the Penn pair dropping the first set of its match against Santa Clara in the opening round. “We started off a bit nervous,” Sandler says. “We weren’t playing well, and I was already thinking about how we were going to go home.” But the Quakers rallied to beat Santa Clara in three sets, which Sandler says “gave us a little bit of the freedom” to play looser and blow past TCU in the next round to officially become All-Americans. “We just got more confidence as we went on,” Sandler adds. They then stunned Wake Forest thanks to Graziani noting how he hit “three really good, really lucky shots” in the tiebreaker. Were they lucky or good? “A bit of both,” he laughs, adding that he and Sandler could see the Wake Forest duo begin to “realize it wasn’t going to be that simple” to get past Penn after a “super close” first set.
For Graziani, who was born in Italy but grew up in Switzerland, one of the best parts of their run was the support they received from friends, family, teammates, and alumni following along on ESPN. His brother, Edoardo Graziani C’23, was also a standout Penn tennis player, so “I had a lot of guys who graduated texting me and calling me like, Come on, keep it going, you’re doing super well,” he says. And now, even though he’s graduated, Graziani believes his success can help the program recruit more talented players in the future and reach new heights—and this time he’ll be the one “texting the guys” and following the matches. “I’ve had the best four years of my life here,” says Graziani, who decided to bypass trying to play professional tennis for a finance job in London.
For Sandler, the rising senior is excited for one more season with Penn tennis, which he also believes is “a program on the rise” that can “hopefully compete at the same level as an ACC or SEC school.” As for having to play with a new doubles partner next year, “it’s going to be weird when I’m playing with someone and they’re not as good as Manfredi,” with Graziani interjecting: “Or shouting to you as much.” But “hopefully I’ll be able to partner up with another guy on the team, and we can do something similar to what we did this year,” Sandler adds.
Bonfiglio believes both Graziani and Sandler were “really good ambassadors of our program,” adding that both “do extremely well in the classroom” as well. And even without Graziani, the coach hopes the Quakers can build off their memorable 2025–26 campaign with even greater success in the future, including capturing the program’s first Ivy League title in 20 years.
“We’ve been selling a vision here of what we think Penn tennis can and should be,” Bonfiglio says. “Now we have something more tangible that we can sell recruits.”
“I think these are two guys,” the coach adds of Graziani and Sandler, “that are going to hopefully be celebrated for a long time to come—and be that linchpin, that spark that kind of got us going.” —DZ
