Florida Women’s Tennis Falls to No. 13 Auburn in SEC Opener
The Florida Gators women’s tennis team was handed a loss in their SEC opener at home by the No. 13 Auburn Tigers Saturday afternoon. The Gators (4-2, 0-1 SEC) fought hard, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Tigers (16-1, 1-0 SEC) in a 5-2 loss.
The Tigers grabbed the doubles point early. They were then able to take the three necessary singles points to secure the victory.
Florida suffered its fifth loss to Auburn in program history and second at home in its second straight loss to the Tigers.
“We have to have a complete match to have a shot and I don’t think we played a complete match today,” Florida coach Nilsson said.
Doubles
The Gators put up a good fight in doubles, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Tigers. India Houghton and Lucie Pawlak were the first to fall, losing their set 6-3.
The duo of Xinyi Nong and Nikola Daubernova lost their set shortly afterwards by the same score. While the pair of Valery Gynina and Brooke Black were up 5-4 it didn’t matter as Auburn already got the two sets they needed to take the point.
Singles
First Set
Singles matches didn’t get off to a good start for the Gators. They lost the first set in four out of the six matches. Gabia Paskauskas was the first to take a set in a 6-0 rout over Auburn’s Angella Okutoyi.
Black was the only other Gator to win her first set. She took a 6-4 victory against Merna Refaat.
The Tigers made quick work of Gynina and Nong, with both falling 6-3 in their first sets.
Despite going back and forth at the start of the set, Ashton Bowers pulled away in the final games to take a 6-4 victory over Pawlak.
The last set to finish was between Houghton and Ekaterina Khairutdinov. After splitting the first three games, Houghton broke Khairutdinov’s serve to win a crucial game seven. Houghton appeared to have complete control over the set afterward and won the next two to quickly set up match point in game nine.
However, Khairutdinov battled back to send the set to a tiebreaker. Khairutdinov had all the momentum and took the tiebreaker and set from Houghton.
Second Set
Auburn claimed the first singles point after Ava Esposito swept Nong in their second set, but Florida grabbed the next two.
Black made quick work of Refaat, taking the set 6-2. While Okutoyi put up a better fight in her second set, it still wasn’t enough to overcome the Gators’ top ranked player. Paskauskas took a 6-4 victory.
Unfortunately for the Gators, the good news stopped there. Pawlak and Bowers essentially repeated their first set. Bowers took another hard-fought 6-4 victory to get Auburn up to three points.
Things looked even worse for the Gators when DJ Bennett took a 5-0 lead over Gynina. Gynina was able to battle back. She took the next three games and inspired some hope in the, at this point, mostly deflated home crowd.
The comeback attempt proved futile, as Bennett took game nine to deliver Auburn another victory to add to their ledger.
Despite the result of the match already decided, Houghton and Khairutdinov agreed to finish their match. During the set, Houghton fell to the ground, which gave both the crowd and the Gators coaches a good scare, but she got right back up and continued to play after a brief conversation with her coach.
Unfortunately for Houghton, she also lost the set, which notched an extra point for Auburn and locked the final score at 5-2.
“Losses hurt and they should hurt, and we’ll hopefully be able to see what these good teams do to us in these big moments,” Steinberg said. “We need to figure out why we’re losing those close games and close sets and what we can do to fix that.”
The Gators take the court next Sunday at 1 p.m. at home against Bethune Cookman.
Category: Gator Sports, Gators Tennis, Uncategorized
