Men's Tennis Opens AT Number 5 TCU on Friday evening and Number 3 Texas on Sunday Afternoon

The lineup is starting to take shape for opening weekend against TCU in Fort Worth, and Texas in Austin. Covid-19 came up last weekend within the squad but hopefully the entire lineup will be ready this weekend. First look finds our singles lineup to be once again strong and deep, while doubles will be much improved.

 

It is quite obvious that Riffice, Shelton and Vale will compete in the top three singles slots. Veteran Andy Andrade will figure in the mix, and then you have many possible combinations from there. As for Greif, his severe ankle injury a while ago plays into the decision at this point I would feel. Whatever the final lineup it will be formidible. I can tell you one thing, our doubles play should be light years ahead of doubles last season.

 

The match was scheduled to be played indoors, which it was. TCU prides itself on bringing out the largest tennis crowd in the nation for their home matches. The courts themselves are purple, and extremely fast, which favors big hitters. Last night TCU pulled another stunt by having the crowd sit on the court in chairs. Yup sit on the court! They have five indoor courts and in doubles they sat TCU fans on courts one and five, while doubles play occurred on courts two, three and four. In singles, rather than playing five singles at the outset of singles play the Frogs played FOUR singles matches on courts one and two. They used a vacant court three to sit fans once again right on the court, and played singles on courts four and five. As I wrote to Coach Roditi of TCU today, that was totally Bush League in my opinion. We did not lose this match because of those bush league tactics, however it was one more distraction our guys had to deal with while fighting a very fired up TCU team. This early season loss will not affect our team's standings nationally much at all. Unlike football and basketball, college tennis is ranked after the first month by computer. A loss to a top five team hardly hurts your status at all. Sunday will be another tough test as Texas is good. The good news is the match will be played outside without fans running around on an adjacent court.

 

I would tell you not to take everything at face value. There was plenty of adversity during the late fall and into this second semester. The players affected are all doing fine now as they round back into match shape. I am not going to address any injuries. As far as the weekend was concerned the obvious deal is we need more work on doubles play. This initial weekend all three teams paired a right hander with a left hander. It takes time for doubles teams to mesh, even if they played together last year. Doubles will be priority and the coaches will decide which pairs are best as a team moving into the future. Sam Riffice is a veteran stud, and he will be just fine as this season unfolds. Our other cocaptain Duarte Vale will be just fine as well as he rounds into tip top match shape. I felt bad for Riffice today as he had the match in hand but could not finish. I think the thing that has not been talked about enough pertaining to doubles was how the number three team of Andrade and Siimar clinched. This pair was up a break at 5-4 on serve and could not close out the tenth deciding game. In fact they lost the tenth game at love. After battling into a tiebreaker which the doubles point depended on, Andy and Mattias found themselves down 2-5. From that point this Gator team won five straight points to clinch the doubles point, which proved to be the eventual margin of victory.
Interesting opening weekend. Preseason number five beats number one Florida. Florida beats number 3 Texas, and number four Tennessee comes into Fort Worth on Sunday and beats TCU 4-3.
Yup its going to be quite the tennis season and our Gators will be right in the thick of it come championship time both in the SEC and Nationally. Next week its number 11 UCF at Florida on Saturday afternoon.