Michael Shipma
Sports Editor
Following a 2-6 start to the spring season, the men’s tennis team exploded for three straight wins, including two at the HEB College Classic hosted by Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
The Trojans got off to a rough start in their first match of the tournament, falling to the hosts 4-0 on Friday. Later in the afternoon, however, they bounced back to defeat the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley 4-1.
Troy carried that momentum into Saturday for its final match in Corpus Christi when the Trojans dismantled DePaul 4-0.
The Trojans then achieved their longest win streak since last season by defeating UT-Arlington 4-2 in a true road match on Sunday.
On Friday against the hosting Islanders, Troy struggled to get anything going, coming away with just one doubles match victory in the entire contest.
In singles play, TAMU-Corpus Christi won the three matches that were completed. The other three went unfinished.
Later in the day, things started looking up for the Trojans as Troy dominated in singles play to get the victory in an abbreviated match.
No doubles matches were played, but the Trojans won four of the six singles matches to get the win, with one other match going unfinished.
Jiaqi Duan, Amer Bedwan, Andy Lau and Oskar Michalek all won their respective matches in two sets, with Mustapha Belcora being the lone loss of the contest for Troy.
The Trojans continued to impress the following day where they used a dominant performance across the board to get a shutout victory over DePaul.
Troy duos of Michalek/Belcora and Lau/Bedwan won their doubles matches 6-3 and 6-4, respectively, with Pelayo Antuña and Duan being the only Trojans to lose a match.
The only three singles matches that were played all resulted in Trojan wins as Antuña, Lau and Duan all won in two sets.
Troy then finished off a largely successful weekend with its second true road win of the season.
In their first conference match of the year, the Trojans controlled both phases of the game to come away with the 4-2 win.
Bedwan and Lau defeated UT-Arlington’s Abhishek Bostola and Eduard Simo 6-3, while Duan and Antuña defeated Enrique Pardo and Andre Russo 6-4 to get Troy the doubles point.
In singles play, Belcora, Bedwan and Lau all won in two sets, with Pardo getting the Mavericks’ lone win of the match in a 7-6, 6-2 decision over Antuña.
Duan’s match against UTA’s Bostola went unfinished, giving Troy its third straight win.
Up next for the Trojans is a two-match home stretch where they will face UC-Wilmington on Friday before taking on another conference foe in South Alabama the next day.
