Hoosiers cruise to victories in home tennis matches

For the men’s tennis team, the routine during the past month — interrupted only by a pair of fixtures and split results against elite foes Oklahoma and Notre Dame — has become a familiar one: practice, practice and more practice.

Saturday, however, provided an opportunity for the team to temporarily abandon monotony and test its mettle in a new role — that of heavy favorites.

The Hoosiers passed with flying colors.

No. 26 Indiana breezed to a pair of victories at the IU Tennis Center on Saturday, eclipsing Eastern Kentucky, 6-1, before besting Butler by a perfect 7-0 mark.  

Though the Hoosiers’ control of both matches was so thorough that neither outcome was ever in doubt, the bottom of the line-up was especially dominant.

At the No. 4, No. 5 and No. 6 positions, the Hoosiers won each contest in straight sets and lost no more than three games in any one stanza.  

IU Coach Randy Bloemendaal, who stated that improvement of play at those spots has been a point of emphasis in recent weeks of practice, said he was pleased with the team’s performance at the bottom, including seniors Stephen Vogl and Will Kendall and sophomore Dima Tasic.  

“There’s four guys down there that are starting to make a push, and if they continue on, we should be dominant at the bottom,” Bloemendaal said.

The Hoosiers’ excellent conditioning — senior members of the team must be able to complete a mile in 5:05, and the standards for freshmen, sophomores and juniors lag only a few seconds behind — appeared to wear their opponents down.

The discrepancy in fitness was most notably on display in Vogl’s morning match, during which he was sprinting between points to stray balls peppered all over the court despite already leading Eastern Kentucky’s Carles Pons, 6-1, 5-1.

“I tried to get in his head with the emotional game,” Vogl said. “I wanted to see what would happen if I put him in a corner, and he kind of crumbled, to be honest.”

Vogl, who proceeded to take that match by a 6-1, 6-2 mark, served up a double dose of love on his afternoon opponent, waxing Butler’s Zach Ervin 6-0, 6-0. Though he hails from Connecticut, Vogl, now in his fourth and final year as a Hoosier, said he never struggles to find motivation when playing in-state opponents.

“Butler’s an Indiana team. We don’t even want to give them a chance to breathe,” Vogl said. “I think that helped me out a lot today, just telling myself, ‘I don’t want to lose to another team from Indiana.’ That helped me out a lot against Notre Dame, as well.”

In a day filled with positive results for the Hoosiers, the top of the lineup enjoyed success nearly as unqualified as that of the bottom.   

At No. 1 singles, a morning battle of francophones from opposite sides of the Atlantic played out in the Hoosiers’ favor, as Quebec native junior Isade Juneau saw off Colonel challenger and Frenchman Hugo Klientovsky, 7-6 (6), 6-4. Juneau then eased to a 6-1, 6-2 defeat of the Bulldogs’ No. 1, freshman Austin Woldmoe, in the afternoon affair.  

Junior Josh MacTaggart also overwhelmed a pair of opponents in singles action at the No. 2 spot, beating Eastern Kentucky netter and German Niklas Schoeder, 6-2, 6-1, and vanquishing Tommy Marx by a score of 6-2, 6-4.

Eastern Kentucky senior Philip Lanz recorded the only point for the Colonels in the first half of the doubleheader, eking out a 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 victory against Jeremy Langer at the No. 3 spot. Langer fought off one match point, but succumbed in the second.

Far from blaming Langer for the close loss, IU Coach Randy Bloemendaal attributed the result to Lanz’s impressive performance.  

“He played phenomenal the whole match,” Bloemendaal said. “He played some really clean tennis and wasn’t carrying the same kind of pressure we’re carrying. There are some things Jeremy needs to do better, and we talked about it, but with that match, especially at the end, my hat was off of to him.”

Langer rebounded from the morning setback in style, shutting out Bulldog adversary Pulok Bhattacharya in the opening set en route to a 6-0, 6-3 triumph in the later match.

The only other blemish on the Hoosiers’ record in the day’s action also came at the hands of the Colonels. At No. 2 doubles, the British duo of MacTaggart and Alastair Barnes fell, 8-6, to Eastern Kentucky’s Klientovsky and Pons.  

The loss marked the third straight for “Tag” and “Barnesie,” as the two are often affectionately called by teammates, and meant the pair had not won a match since Feb. 5 against Northern Illinois.

Hoping to bring the streak to an abrupt end, the two switched sides on the court for their match against Butler, with MacTaggart assuming duties on the ad side and Barnes taking over the deuce half. The move paid immediate dividends, as the tandem jumped out to 3-0 and 6-1 leads before settling for an 8-4 victory.  

“I think Josh is a little more comfortable on the ad side,” Kendall said. “The true test will be against stiffer competition, but it seemed like they found a rhythm in the second match and got back on the winning track. That’s definitely beneficial for the team in general because we need them to win matches for us.”