Oregon men’s tennis grabbed a confident 4-1 victory over Louisiana-Lafayette on Sunday morning. The Ducks won the doubles point before dominating the singles matches. Victories from Vlad Breazu, Zian Vanderstappen and Lenn Luemkemann closed out the first of two matches the Ducks played on Sunday.
“I’m proud of the guys,” Oregon head coach Nils Schyllander said afterwards. “We had the crud [sickness] going through the team, so we weren’t even sure who was going to play. We had to make some changes, and I don’t think the energy dropped.”
Oregon swept the doubles matches early in the day. Luemkemann and Matthew Burton fended off a comeback attempt from the Ragin’ Cajuns’ best to win, 6-3 and were looking on as Cooper Errey and Clement Lemire closed out a 6-3 victory in which they led throughout. Neither pair trailed in their game.
Breazu and Lachlan Robertson were the only Duck duo to trail in the doubles point, but returned from a 3-1 deficit to tie the match at 5-5 and led 40-0 before Errey and Lemire won the point in their match less than five minutes after Luemkemann and Burton won theirs.
“We just went all-in on the doubles,” Schyllander said, “just to try and grab that momentum…and because we also knew that they were going to doubt themselves. We’re hard to win four singles matches against, so that first point is so important.”
Luemkemann’s confidence was obvious in his singles match, too. The German watched a ball float towards the back line in the fifth point before pulling his racket just out of the way at turning with a roar. He trailed in the point, but pulled back from 15-40 to claim a 4-1 lead. He would eventually win the set, 6-2.
Breazu nearly shut out his opponent in the first set across from Leumkemann, but a back-and-forth sixth point in which Cajuns man Vasil Dimitrov returned from 15-40 down to claim a point saw that opportunity vanish. He dominated his opponent from that point on, though, winning 6-2, 6-2 to claim the Ducks’ second point of the day.
“I believe that staying in the present moment is the most important thing,” Breazu said. “Even if you lose a couple games, or win a couple games, always the next point is the most important one.”
The Cajuns’ man on the fourth court, Calin Postea, dispatched with the Ducks’ Matthew Burton 6-4, 6-2 to grab Louisiana’s only point of the day. Burton never led by more than a point in either of his sets, and dropped the match — the second of the singles games to finish.
Zian Vanderstappen closed out William Jade on Court 6, 6-4, 6-3, Vanderstappen never trailed in the first set, where he built a 3-1 advantage into an early win. An early 2-1 deficit never worried the sophomore, though, and he won the match to put Oregon on the brink of victory.
It was Luemkemann, then, who would eventually win the day for the Ducks. Oregon’s man on Court 1 fended off a comeback in his second set from Oriol Fillat Giminez to win the set, 6-4 after Gimenez nearly knotted it at 5-5 but saw his return sail wide of Oregon’s number one player.
The unfinished matches were captivating, even so. Clement Lemire lost his first set, 6-4, but returned from a 5-2 deficit to knot the set at 5-5 before Luemkemann won the day for Oregon. Cooper Errey struggled in his first set, too, where he lost 6-3 to Samuel Kyjaci, but dominated the Cajuns player in the second set, 6-1, and led 4-1 when the match ended.
Vital for the Ducks, too, was energy. The victory was the first of two they looked to claim on Sunday, and their confidence throughout was key.
“We grabbed it with a doubles point early, and I don’t think we let our foot off the gas,” Schyllander said. “It’s huge, and momentum changes really easily, so we did a good job of staying on it when we had it.”
