Florida Gators
Arkansas
Men's Tennis Sweeps Arkansas in SEC Opener
Saturday, March 6, 2010 | Men's Tennis
The seventh-ranked University of Florida men's tennis team swept Arkansas, 7-0, in its SEC opener at the George M. Billingsley Indoor Tennis Center in Fayetteville , Ark., on Friday. The Gators improve to 9-2 overall this spring (1-0 SEC), while Arkansas drops to 8-5 (0-1 SEC).
“That was a good day for us to get an SEC win on the road,” UF head coach Andy Jackson said. “That is a signal of toughness to be able to go out and do that in our first SEC road match. Now, we have to go do it again at LSU on Sunday.”
Florida started on the right track, sweeping all three doubles courts with Joey Burkhardt (St. Augustine, Fla.) and Sekou Bangoura Jr. (Bradenton, Fla.), ranked No. 43 in the nation, picking up the clincher on the second court.
Bob Van Overbeek (Boca Raton, Fla.) and Billy Federhofer (North Miami, Fla.) were the first to notch a win, coming at the No. 3 position over No. 56 Taylor King and Bradwin Williams. The 16th-ranked Antoine Benneteau (Boulogne-Billancourt, France) and Alexandre Lacroix (Paris, France) rounded out the Gator doubles sweep at No. 1, downing No. 26 Dmitry Lebedev and Chris Nott.
Singles action followed a similar path, with the Gators seeing nothing but victories. Van Overbeek, who has won SEC Freshman of the Week the past two weeks, got UF rolling with a straight-sets win at the No. 4 position, followed shortly by No. 121 Benneteau on the third court. With the victory, Benneteau improves to 9-1 at singles in dual match play.
Florida's clincher came at the No. 6 position, as Nassim Slilam (Paris, France) bounced back after dropping the first set against fellow Frenchman Gregoire Lehmann. Slilam evened the match with a 6-3 second-set win and then cruised to a 6-1 third set to give the Gators a 1-0 start to their SEC season.
“Often, guys feel extra pressure when they're playing against one of their countrymen,” Jackson said. “I think Nassim was feeling that at the beginning, but he settled down and played very well the rest of the match.”
From there, UF cruised through the rest of its singles matches, with the sixth-ranked Lacroix downing No. 57 Nott on the No. 1 court, followed Burkhardt at the No. 2 spot and Bangoura at the fifth position.
Bangoura split the first two sets and, with the Gator win already secured, headed into a tiebreaker against Nikolas Zogaj. Bangoura saved several match points and had many of his own before finally closing out the tiebreaker by a 16-14 margin in what Jackson called a “high-quality win.”
Florida continues its SEC schedule at 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon facing another road test at LSU.
Florida vs. Arkansas
Doubles
No. 1 – (16) Benneteau/Lacroix (UF) def. (26) Lebedev/Nott (UA) – 9-7
No. 2 – (43) Bangoura/Burkhardt (UF) def. Hogan/Walters (UA) – 8-6*
No. 3 – Federhofer/Van Overbeek (UF) def. (56) King/Williams (UA) – 8-3
Order of finish: 3, 2*, 1
Singles
No. 1 – (6) Alexandre Lacroix (UF) def. (57) Christopher Nott (UA) – 6-3, 6-2
No. 2 – Joey Burkhardt (UF) def. Matthew Hogan (UA) – 7-5, 6-1
No. 3 – (121) Antoine Benneteau (UF) def. Dmitry Lebedev (UA) – 6-3, 6-1
No. 4 – Bob Van Overbeek (UF) def. Taylor King (UA) – 6-3, 6-2
No. 5 – Sekou Bangoura Jr. (UF) def. Nikolas Zogaj (UA) – 7-5, 4-6, 1-0 (16-14)
No. 6 – Nassim Slilam (UF) def. Gregoire Lehmann (UA) – 1-6, 6-3, 6-1*
Order of finish: 4, 3, 6*, 1, 2, 5
*Clinched doubles point/dual match victory
-UF-
