By Steve Lansdale
ORLANDO, Fla. — The No. 2 University of Texas men’s tennis team swept all four singles matches en route to a 4-1 victory over No. 3 Wake Forest to claim the first national championship in program history.
“I was really proud of the team, and I’m sure any Longhorn fan would be proud of the way this team represented the state of Texas, not only today, but all year long,” interim head coach Bruce Berque said. “I’m super-happy (the players) get to have this memory and bond with each other for the rest of their lives. They showed true Texas fight today, being able to come back after not winning the doubles point and facing some deficits on a few of the singles courts. I couldn’t be in greater admiration of the way they competed.”
The Longhorns finished the season [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]with a record of 29-3; the 29 victories are the most in school history since 1974, when teams played more matches and Texas finished the season with a record of 31-18.
The Longhorns fell behind when Wake Forest won the doubles point. In the first doubles match, No. 63 Alan Gadjiev and Borna Gojo topped No. 5 Harrison Scott and Christian Sigsgaard, 6-4, and No. 55 Bar Botzer and Petros Chrysochos took down UT’s Colin Markes and Leonardo Telles, 6-3. Chih Chi Huang and Yuya Ito gave the Longhorns their only doubles victory with a 6-2 victory over Siddhant Manthia and Julian Zlobinsky.
But UT stormed back in singles. No. 7 Sigsgaard swept No. 11 Gojo, 6-3, 6-4, at the No. 1 spot. No. 12 Ito rallied past No. 8 Chrysochos, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, at No. 2. Markes and Rodrigo Banzer picked up close two-set victories: Markes knocked off Melios Efstathiou, 6-4, 7-5, while Banzer flipped that score in his 7-5, 6-4 victory over Banthia.
In the top match, Sigsgaard fell behind, 3-2, before reeling off victories in the next four games to claim the first set. In the second, he fell behind by the same 3-2 score before winning three straight to go ahead, 5-3. Gojo trimmed the margin to a single game before Sigsgaard closerd out the match to even the overall score at 1-1.
Banzer fell behind, 5-2, in the first set of his match with Banthia before winning five straight games to win the first set. In the second set, Banzer built 3-0 and 5-1 leads and then withstood a three-game Banthia winning streak before winning the set and giving UT a 2-1 team lead.
Markes put the Longhorns ahead, 3-1, breaking Efstathiou in the final game to win the first set, and outlasting Efstathiou in a marathon second set that got knotted up at 5-5 before Markes held and broke serve for the win.
It was only appropriate that in the match that ultimately clinched the national championship for UT, Ito faced Chrysochos, the defending NCAA single’s champion. Chrysochos jumped out to a 4-0 lead en route to winning the opening set, 6-3, and won the first two games of the second set before Ito heated up with a 4-0 winning streak to win the equalizing second set. After Ito pulled out to a 3-1 lead in the third set, two two traded service games throughout the rest of the set, which Ito won to give Texas the national championship.
Three Longhorns will compete in the Singles and Doubles Championships in matches that can be seen on the Tennis Channel. Sigsgaard will face Texas A&M’s Juan Aguilar at 2 p.m. (Central Time) MondayIto will take on Ohio State’s John McNally at 3 p.m. and Scott will go up against North Carolina’s William Blumberg at 12 p.m. In doubles, Scott and Sigsgaard will match up against Simen Bratholm and Nick Brookes of Northwestern.
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