After opening the season largely without being challenged, the Florida men’s and women’s tennis teams will take trips to nationally ranked teams in what is sure to be a difficult weekend of tennis for both.
The No. 5 men’s team (3-0) will travel to Charlottesville, Va., for an indoor match against No. 2 Virginia on Saturday at 1 p.m.
The No. 1 women (2-0) will travel to Waco, Texas, for a match against No. 5 Baylor also on Saturday at 1 p.m.
For the women, who have yet to drop a point, Baylor will be a barometer match to truly gauge Florida’s progress. After two relatively easy wins against Troy and UCF, the Gators will use this match at Baylor to get ready for a very tough stretch of matches that includes a trip to No. 2 Stanford next weekend.
The men, who qualified last weekend for the ITA Indoor Nationals in Charlottesville, will be facing the tougher challenge, playing the No. 2 team in the country. Plus, the fact that Virginia plays indoors changes the dynamic of the match.
“The time that you have in between shots is significantly less, which drastically impacts play,” coach Andy Jackson said. “It’s a faster game, which gives (a player) less time to make his swings.”
“The easiest way to explain it,” he said, “is that it’s why (Rafael) Nadal always beats (Roger) Federer on clay, and why Federer generally plays much better on indoors or hard.”
The Cavaliers also feature two of the nation’s top-15 singles players. No. 1 Mitchell Frank and No. 11 Jarmere Jenkins will be the two best Florida has faced this season.
Virginia also has four doubles teams ranked in the top 50 in the nation. In that sense, Florida will enter this match as underdogs.
“We had Billy (Federhofer) and Nassim (Slilam) play in the national indoors in the fall and they did pretty good,” junior Bob van Overbeek said, “and we had the warm-up tournament in Kentucky on indoor courts. So this will be our first collective team effort indoors against one of the top teams in the country.”
Part of the goal of the weekend is to prepare for the Indoor Nationals next month, but a more pressing one is to see how the team fares against elite competition.
Much like the women will be tested at Baylor, the men will use this weekend’s match as the first true test of the team’s ability.
“We’re looking forward to going and using them as a measuring stick to see where we are right now,” he said.
“We know we’re good, but we don’t know how good, and we’ll see after this weekend.”
Florida junior tennis player Bob van Overbeek said this weekend’s match against No. 2 Virginia will serve as a gauge for determining just how good the team is this season.
