The UF men’s tennis team began its SEC weekend road trip today when it traveled to Oxford to take on Ole Miss at the Palmer-Salloum Tennis Center.
The Gators (10-6, 3-1 SEC) defeated the Rebels (6-5, 1-3 SEC) by a score of 5-2.
Despite a comfortable victory, Florida started off play shakily in Oxford, losing the doubles point.
The upperclassmen pairing of seniors Maxx Lipman and Elliott Orkin dropped the first doubles match for the Gators, losing to the Rebel duo of Ricardo Jorge and Zvonimir Babic by a score of 6-2.
The nation’s fourth ranked doubles pairing, UF’s Alfredo Perez and Johannes Ingildsen, lost by a score 6-3 to Mississippi’s 23rd ranked tandem of Fabian Fallert and Grey Hamilton.
The loss secured the doubles point for Ole Miss and is only Perez-Ingildsen’s second defeat of the 2017 dual season (7-2) and first at the hands of an SEC opponent (3-1).
However, the Gators were able to take control of the match in singles play.
Florida defeated its opponents quickly in singles, winning the first four singles matches to finish all in two sets.
UF freshman Joseph Guillin started things off positively in the number six position. The Paris, France native played in his first dual singles match of 2017, making short work of Babic en route to 6-1, 6-2 victory.
Junior Chase Perez-Blanco finished his match shortly after Guillin, securing another victory for UF over Ole Miss freshman Tim Sandkaulen by a tally of 6-3, 6-1.
Maxx Lipman was able to defeat his opponent, Filip Kraljevic, on court five by the same score, 6-3, 6-1.
And on court one, Perez was able to seal the victory for the Gators. Perez defeated Mississippi’s Gustav Hannson in two hard-fought sets scored 7-5, 6-3.
And despite Perez assuring the victory for Florida on court one, matches still continued on courts two and four.
On court two, the Rebels’ lone senior, Jorge, faced off with the Gator captain, Orkin. The two split the first two sets, both of which ended in tiebreaks. The match then culminated in a third-set tiebreak rather than a traditional set. Jorge was able to narrowly defeat Orkin, giving the Rebels their only singles victory by a score of 7-6, 6-7, 10-6.
Yet, Ingildsen was able to put the cherry on top of the Florida victory, rounding off the match by winning 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 over Fallert.
Now, Florida will try to carry its momentum into Fayetteville as it shifts its focus to a matchup at Arkansas on Saturday night.
Contact Mark Stine at mstine@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @mstinejr.
Alfredo Perez hits a backhand during Florida's 4-2 against UCLA on Feb. 5, 2017, at the Ring Tennis Complex.
