Florent Diep’s blue Gators polo was drenched with sweat when the match finally ended.
He had played almost four hours of tennis after his match with Baylor’s Julian Lenz was finished.
However, Diep was on the losing side of the match, succumbing 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
Lenz’s win carried the No. 20 Baylor Bears (7-1) to a 4-3 victory, and dropped the No. 16 Florida Gators to 6-4 on the season.
Diep said exhaustion wore in toward the end, but his focus never deterred from his battle with Lenz.
“Obviously I’m tired, but you don’t really feel it because you’re focused on what you have to do to play for the team,” Diep said.
Lenz got the best of Diep twice on Saturday. The Bears’ Lenz and Patrick Pradella beat Diep and Mike Alford 8-3, giving Baylor momentum to clinch the doubles point when Diego Galeano and Marko Krickovic defeated UF’s Billy Federhofer and Luke Johnson 8-5 on court three.
Florida has now lost four consecutive doubles points. Federhofer said the team needs to start playing better in doubles to build momentum early in matches.
“For the past few doubles matches, we have all been down and made comebacks on different courts, and if we were to start early and connect we could get these points,” Federhofer said.
In singles, Federhofer found himself trailing to Krikovic again. Down 4-0 in set one, Federhofer battled back to win 7-6 in a tiebreaker set.
After giving up the second set 1-6, Federhofer clawed to victory winning the third set and match. Senior Bob van Overbeek, who lost his fourth consecutive match on Saturday, was the first to run over to Federhofer and give him a bear hug after his 2:29 match.
“Billy is resilient,” coach Bryan Shelton said. “He made some adjustments and picked up the emotional fight and got himself into the battle. … To see Billy close it out in the end, that was tremendous. It was huge for us.”
With a 3-2 lead the Gators needed one of the two remaining matches to win. At No. 4 singles, Mike Alford grabbed the first set from Baylor’s Mate Zsiga, but Zsiga charged back to win, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Diep’s match was the remaining match.
“Next time we’re in that situation I want to see us run through the door and get across that finish line first,” Shelton said. “We’re looking forward to what lies ahead with the SEC season. This coming weekend we get to play Texas A&M. It’s a new season for us and I’m ready to get started.”
Junior Florent Diep strikes the ball during Florida’s 5-2 victory against Miami on Jan. 19 at Linder Stadium.
