The Virginia men’s tennis team made it clear Friday night that they are in the hunt for the top spot in the college tennis world. The Cavaliers entered the season ranked second with another talent-rich lineup that features the nation’s top ranked college player, UVa freshman Mitchell Frank, lingering at No. 3 in the Cavaliers’ singles order.
The Texas Longhorns, ranked 15th nationally but returning only two of their top six players from last year’s program, could not manage a single victory in either singles or doubles against the UVa men on Friday night as the Cavaliers cruised to a 7-0 shellacking of the Longhorns at the Boyd Tinsley Courts.
The UVa lineup boasts three of the top singles players in the country in Jarmere Jenkins, Alex Domijan, and Mitchell Frank. Any one of these three is a serious threat to win the NCAA singles title in May and their most serious competition may be with one another. If there is a question mark about this year’s UVa team, it would either be in the doubles play or in the performance in the bottom half of the singles lineup. Last year the Cavaliers upended Texas 5-2, but lost all three doubles matches.
Virginia coach Brian Boland returns one player with a national doubles championship in his resume, senior Drew Courtney. As a sophomore, Courtney teamed with Michael Shabaz to capture the 2010 NCAA doubles title. In Friday's match, Boland paired Courtney with Jenkins at No. 1doubles and was rewarded with an 8-3 win over Texas’ top duo. Two big servers, Domijan and senior Steve Rooda, cruised to an 8-1 victory in the second spot. In the third position and the last doubles match to finish, Frank teamed up with junior Julen Uriguen, winning 8-4, providing UVa with a sweep of the doubles and reversing the outcome of last season’s doubles matches with the Longhorns.
The Virginia men won the first, second, fifth and sixth singles matches easily in straight sets running up an unbeatable 5-0 lead over Texas. Frank had a surprisingly difficult match with Texas’s Sudanwa Sitaram at No. 3 singles when Sitaram forced the match into a third set. The outcome was decided by a super tiebreaker that went 10-3 in Frank’s favor. Virginia then led 6-0 with Courtney playing in the No. 4 position. Courtney struggled back from the loss of the first set to Texas freshman Lloyd Glasspool to take the second set in a tiebreaker. The third set was resolved narrowly by an 8-6 tiebreaker, giving Courtney a 3-6, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (6) victory.
It can’t get much closer than that, but for Courtney, it is an important victory to start off the new season after being injury-plagued most of last season.
The match with Texas is the first of three major challenges this weekend for the Cavaliers, who face No. 5 Florida on Saturday and No. 11 Texas A&M on Sunday. Both weekend matches will begin at 1p.m. at the Boar’s Head Sports Club.
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