As Roland Thornqvist prepares his team for its last regular-season match, he feels Florida has finally hit its stride.
Despite spending the entire season within the top two spots of the ITA rankings, Thornqvist has used an ever-changing doubles lineup to keep his players fresh.
“It’s not by design, really,” Thornqvist said. “But if you look at the 10 years that [assistant coach] Dave [Balogh] and I have been here, every year we have had doubles changes in the middle of the year for various reasons.”
Thornqvist’s doubles lineup has varied so much over the course of the spring season that the Gators now have six doubles pairings listed in the ITA doubles rankings — despite the fact that only three teams can take the court during a dual match.
Regardless of how many shakeups there have been in doubles throughout the season, there has been one important constant: winning.
The Gators (21-1, 10-0 SEC) overtook Stanford for the No. 1 spot in the polls Tuesday behind two huge wins over then-No. 6 Georgia and then-No. 14 Tennessee.
And Thornqvist has shown he won’t hesitate to break up any partners, even the pairing of Allie Will and Sofie Oyen that spent the first half of the year ranked No. 1.
“Sometimes a doubles team sort of runs its course,” Thornqvist said. “They stop improving or communicating well, so you sort of have to reinvigorate it a little, and the quickest way to do that is to change partners. This year, we changed because of [Court 3] doubles, I felt like we needed to be better there, and right now I’m very optimistic.”
Over the weekend, the No. 8 pair of Will and freshman Alex Cercone played on Court 1, with the new duo of Oyen and Lauren Embree dominating two quality teams on Court 2.
The Court 3 pair that caught Thornqvist’s eye featured junior leader Joanna Mather and freshman Olivia Janowicz.
Mather said Florida’s doubles teams against Georgia and Tennessee were the strongest it had put out all season.
“With Joanna, I feel very comfortable,” Janowicz said. “We both hit the ball pretty hard and flat, and I feel like we can do a lot of damage that way.”
With the postseason tournaments looming, the Gators know there’s a good chance they might come across Stanford again down the road.
The two teams played in the NCAA final last year, with the Cardinal coming out on top, and they have once again separated themselves from the rest of the country this season.
The undefeated Cardinal are the only team to beat the Gators this season, holding the top position in the polls for eight weeks while UF has held it five. What’s even more intriguing is that Florida has only lost the doubles point once this season — to Stanford.
If Florida wants to step out of Stanford’s shadow with a deep postseason run, it will need every ounce of success its doubles lineup can muster.
