The Gators men’s tennis team made it to five in a row.
Florida left Athens, Georgia with a 5-2 win over Georgia on Friday at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. The Gators improved to 11-2 overall and 4-0 in SEC play with the win. Georgia fell to 6-6 overall and 2-2 in SEC play.
The Gators will now continue their SEC road trip on Sunday as they travel to Knoxville, Tennessee to take on the No. 22 Volunteers. The match will begin at 1 p.m.
For the first time in three matches, UF won the doubles point. Sophomore Oliver Crawford and freshman Sam Riffice won for the ninth time this season, which is a team-best. On Court 2, junior Johannes Ingildsen and senior Alfredo Perez, who didn’t play together against Wake Forest on Wednesday, clinched the match with a 6-4 win, bringing their season record to 5-5.
In singles, Georgia briefly tied the match with on Court 5. UF took the lead back with a win by Riffice in straight sets. He improved to 4-0 in SEC play with the win. He has also only lost one set in SEC play.
For the third match in a row, No. 24 Crawford scored another upset with a 6-3, 6-4 win on Court 1 over No. 20 Emil Reinberg. And sophomore Andy Andrade clinched the match with a three-set win over No. 10 Jan Zielinski. Zielinski is the Bulldogs’ highest-ranked singles player.
There was still one more important match to be decided and that was on Court 6 as senior and Georgia native McClain Kessler was playing for the final time in his home state. After losing the first set, Kessler won the second set to force a 10-point tiebreaker. He won that tiebreaker 10-3 and took the match.
"It means the world for me to win in my home state and have my dad and coach growing up there,” Kessler said in a release. “It felt so good for me to win a win in front of them.”
Georgia got one point back as Ingildsen fell in a third-set tiebreaker.
“As a team, getting the win was amazing because the last two times we came here, we lost and our guys wanted this one bad,” Kessler said. “I could see it in their eyes when we woke up this morning that they were ready to go.”
Follow Noah Ram on Twitter @noah_ram1 and contact him at nram@alligator.org.
The Gators' men's tennis team topped Georgia 5-2. Sophomore Andy Andrade (pictured) clinched the match with a three-set win over Georgia's No. 10 Jan Zielinski.
Noah is a third year journalism-sports and media student from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He has been with The Alligator since Spring 2019 and has covered men’s and women’s tennis, gymnastics and volleyball. When he isn’t on his beat, Noah is usually sadden over his beloved South Florida sports teams, such as the Heat and Dolphins.
