Florida Women’s Tennis Wins Nail-Biter Against No. 11 Oklahoma

The Florida Gators women’s tennis team upset the No. 11 Oklahoma Sooners at home Saturday. The Gators (7-2, 2-1 SEC) beat the Sooners (10-4, 1-2 SEC) in nail-biting fashion, winning 4-3 with the final point coming down to a back-and-forth third set.

“You need to get over that hump and get a big one and I think they did today,” said Florida coach Per Nilsson.

The deciding set between Florida’s Lucie Pawlak and Oklahoma’s Salakthip Ounmuang was a battle to the finish. Neither side broke, as they went back and forth through the first nine games. It was Pawlak who had the most crucial hold in game nine, as she took the game to go up 5-4.

Afterwards, she broke Ounmuang’s serve to take the match and the victory for the Gators.

“It’s like a freaking dream,” Pawlak said. “It was incredible. I’m so proud of the team and I’m so proud of myself.”

The doubles match started poorly for the Gators. The court one pair of Xinyi Nong and Nikola Daubnerova and the court three pair Pawlak and India Houghton fell behind 4-1 early.

  Meanwhile the court two pair of Valery Gynina and Brooke Black held their own. They won four out of their first six games. However, the script flipped after this.  

The duos on courts one and three rallied back to tighten up their sets. Meanwhile, the Gators’ court two duo lost their next four in a row to surrender the set to the Sooners.  

When they lost, the court one pairing was down 5-4 and the court three duo was winning by the same score.  

The next game on court one went to 40-40. With the doubles point on the line, Daubnerova sent a return into the net to end the set. In a tightly contested affair, Oklahoma grabbed the doubles point.

Singles were even more hotly contested than doubles. The now split doubles pairing of Gynina and Black were the first two to finish their first sets. Black dominated. She took her set 6-2.  On the other hand, Gynina, despite a late comeback attempt, lost her set 6-3. The remaining four sets were all nailbiters.  

Pawlak was the first to pull out her set. After falling behind 3-1, she stormed back and took five of the next six games against Ounmuang to win 6-4.

Houghton’s set was back and forth the whole way through. Her and Julia Garcia Ruiz split their first 10 games. Houghton got a crucial break in game 11 to put herself up 6-5. Houghton won the next game to close the set and avoid a tiebreaker.

Paskauskas and Nong were unable to dodge a tiebreaker in their sets as the tight sets were even at 6-6 through 12 games. Nong put her set away, taking the tiebreaker 7-3.  Paskauskas found more trouble in the tiebreaker. Just like the set, it was even at 6-6.  Unfortunately for Paskauskas, Edda Mamedova took the next two points to win the set 7-6.

“Those are really big momentum swings in a match,” Nilsson said. “We lose another one of those and it looks real bad.”

In the second set, three matches were closed out quickly. Evialina Laskevich closed out her match against Gynina, taking the second set by the same score as the first. The Gators quickly responded. Houghton and Nong carried the momentum from their first set victory into the second to take down their opponents and grab Florida two points.

Paskauskas played another tight set, but came up short again. Mamedova took the set and the point.

Black couldn’t transfer her dominance in the first set to the second, as Chloe Noel forced a third set. Pawlak played another close set, but wasn’t able to pull out another victory, sending her match to a third set as well.

Black quickly closed out her third set, dispatching Noel 6-1 and tying the score 3-3. It all came down to Pawlak v. Ounmuang.

The fans moved to the left side of the stands to watch the final set on court five, the court furthest to the left.

Pawlak and Ounmuang split the first eight games of the set, with neither side being able to break the other’s serve. In the end, it was Pawlak who got the crucial first break. After holding serve once again in game nine, Pawlak finally broke Ounmuang’s serve to lock down the victory.

“We lost the doubles point and we still came back to win,” Nilsson said. “That’s hard to do against a really good team, so that was a really good bonus for us.”

The Gators hit the road for their next matchup. They continue their SEC slate at LSU Thursday at 6 p.m.

Category: Gators Tennis