The Texas A&M Men’s tennis team began conference play in Auburn, Alabama Friday afternoon.
The No. 8 Aggies got on the board early as they earned the doubles point over the Tigers. A&M only suffered a loss on court three by the group of Aggie sophomores Jordi Arconada and AJ Catanzariti.
After that initial point, momentum followed for the Aggies.
A&M won on all of its first four courts while also having a victory over on court six. The only loss in singles for A&M was on court five by AJ Catanzariti.
Texas A&M earned its first conference win of the year over the Tigers by a final score of 6-1.
The No. 8 Aggies came back to the Mitchell Tennis Center Sunday afternoon to take on the No. 30 Florida Gators and the Nicholls State Colonels.
Florida came into College Station for the first game with the No. 1 doubles team in the nation. This was a fast win for the Gators and A&M quickly found itself losing the contest.
Singles play was back and forth the whole afternoon against the in-conference foe. The Aggies tied it with a win on the sixth court 2-2, the Gators went ahead 3-2 on the fourth, but later it was tied again with a win on the first court by sophomore Arthur Rinderknech.
More importantly, court two consumed the most time but was especially crucial for A&M.
After all of the three sets from that court went into a tiebreaker, senior Shane Vinsant clinched the victory over Florida 4-3.
“It was just an overall really tough match, he’s a good player,” Vinsant said. “I just thought I stayed in there and fought really well and ended up playing some good tennis at key moments in the match.
The second game of Sunday’s doubleheader proved to be an easy win for A&M.
The Aggies quickly went up 1-0 after winning on the first and third courts.
Soon after, there were three straight single match wins that gave A&M the second victory of the day.
After the Aggies clinched, the remaining matches were played through and the final was 6-1 Texas A&M.
Head coach Steve Denton had a few words following Sunday’s matches.
“Every one of these SEC matches is a war and we’ve survived two and we got a lot more but I think our guys got to gain confidence from being down,” Denton said. “We were down obviously one that lost the doubles point today and we knew we had to win four singles,” Denton said.
After going 2-0 Sunday, the Aggies will now compete against Arkansas in Fayetteville on Mar. 11 at 3pm.
