The No. 13 Florida men’s tennis team put another tally on their win streak after defeating Troy University 5-2 on Friday afternoon.
Coach Bryan Shelton said that he could see it in his player’s eyes during warm-ups and their pre-game talks that the Gators came ready to play Friday.
Florida started off the evening on a high note after defeating the Trojans in all four doubles matches, giving the Gators a 1-0 lead heading into singles play.
After a promising freshman year as a doubles duo, Maxx Lipman and Elliot Orkin finished their doubles play without allowing Troy’s Giovani Samaha and Gabriel Dias pair to score a single point, taking the 6-0 sweep.
“I thought the doubles was excellent up and down the line. I thought it was a big improvement from a week ago,” Shelton said. “Our identity as a team is a gritty, fighting team and I thought in most cases we displayed that today.”
Thus far, doubles is Florida’s execution and singles is its small flaw.
The Gators had a tough time getting ahead in the first set of its singles match. Three of Florida’s singles players, Gordon Watson, Jordan Belga and Lipman, went into a tiebreak during their first set of singles play.
After starting off with a 1-0 bout in doubles play, the Gators clinched the victory against Troy University, winning six of the eight singles matches. Although, five of the six singles match victories were finished after two sets.
“Overall, I think we did pretty well. I’m not sure if we handled the big points as much as I would’ve liked.” Shelton said. “This no-add scoring promotes a lot of big, exciting points and today I think we lost a sheer of those points.”
Watson fell short in his singles debut to the Trojan’s Hassan Ndayishimye in the third set (12-10).
The 5-foot-11 Naples native was earlier this week considered a big part of Florida’s puzzle by Shelton. Watson still keeps his head up for the rest of the season.
“For a first match I think it’s a great starting point, it’s no where near where I’d like to be,” Watson said. “But for a first match coming off an injury it felt really good on the court, I moved extremely well. Losing in a third set tie-breaker isn’t always the best but when you have set points in the first and match points it hurts but you know you were close.”
Shelton agrees that this match may have not been Watson’s best one yet but is confident that the more he plays the more he will progress.
“I thought (Watson) did well. I was really pleased with how he competed throughout the match, he had a lot of opportunities that he didn’t get today,” third-year coach said. “He’s just got to get back out there and get some more matches under his belt. I expect ‘G’ to come back and play even better next weekend.”
Florida continues its season on Jan. 24 against Ole Miss in Florida’s ITA Kickoff weekend at 11 a.m. South Carolina will verse Stanford University as well at the Ring Tennis Complex at 11 a.m.
Follow Caylee Underwood on Twitter @CayUnderwood
