It was a frigid Saturday at the Alabama Tennis Complex as the men’s tennis team had a double header, opening the Tide’s home schedule going against Troy and Furman.
The cold temperatures didn’t faze the Tide at all –the team beat Troy 5-1 before sweeping Furman 7-0 – and they certainly didn’t faze Alabama freshman Daniil Proskura, who is from Tallinn, Estonia.
“Playing in this cold weather is ok with me,” he said. “I am from a cold country. You have to do more warm-up, but I play well in it, and the rest of the guys play well in it too, but it doesn’t matter because our opponents have same conditions.
“It was a great day for all of us. We got a lot of experience from the matches today, and were getting better on the court.”
The day got started early as Alabama faced Troy in the morning set, but both squads decided to only play singles in the morning due to the weather.
Ricky Doverspike and Jarryd Botha (Alabama’s top two players) were dominant in all of their matches on the day. Doverspike defeated Troy junior Branco Weber, 6-4, 6-4. Botha “goose-egged” Troy sophomore Anas Rouchdi, 6-0, 6-0.
“We kept saying in the locker room that Jarryd was like Mike Tyson out there today,” Pate said. “He was looking for the knockout.”
Proskura, Michael Thompson and Carlos Taborga all defeated their opponents in dominating fashion as well, wrapping up all of their respective matches in two sets.
Later in the day, the Tide was impressive against Furman, taking all three matches in doubles competition.
Doverspike and junior Vikram Reddy defeated seniors Sawyer Duncan and Andrei Chvetsov, 8-3. Botha and Proskura defeated freshman Alex Christ and Joel Cook, 8-4, and senior Trey Walston and junior Michael Thompson got the win against Furman sophomores Bobby Browning and Andrew Mellow, 8-6.
The story was much the same for Alabama in singles competition, as they completely dominated Furman in all six singles matches.
Doverspike beat Sawyer Duncan on court one, 6-4, 6-3. Botha got the win on court two against Andrei Chvetsov, 6-1, 6-0. Reddy beat Alex Christ, 6-3, 7-5, on court three. Proskura took down Andrew Mellow, 7-5, 6-3. Thompson was victorious over Robbie Aru, 6-2, 6-4, and Carlos Taborga got the victory against Watson George, 6-1, 6-1.
Alabama is looking forward to heading back to Texas next weekend as they take on TCU and SMU on Feb 11-12. The Tide learned a lot during its home opener and will be taking the lessons learned with them on the road.
“We need to take the confidence from this match… we needed the reps from today if nothing else, and just getting out there and playing a lot,” Pate said. The coach also said he hopes that, when the squad heads to Dallas next weekend, things will be much warmer.
