SUNSET HILLS - Less than 24 hours after being shutout 9-0 in a home loss to Illinois College, Webster University Men's Tennis returned to the courts here Friday afternoon and posted an 8-1 victory over Fontbonne in a St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference match at the Sunset Tennis Center.
With Friday's win, Webster moves its overall record back over .500 at 4-3 on the season and opens SLIAC play with a 1-0 mark, while Fontbonne falls to 0-2 overall and 0-2 in the SLIAC.
The Gorloks opened Friday's match by talking all three doubles matches as they dropped a total of seven games in the three matches against the Griffins.
Freshman
Zach Bliss (Branson, Mo./Branson) and freshman
Courtland Butler (St. Louis, Mo./McKinley) teamed up at the No. 3 spot for the first time this season and posted an 8-0 win over Noah Coddington and Luke Darst, while freshmen
Austin Nation (Oklahoma City, Okla./Purcell) and
Tom Shutzman (St. Louis, Mo./Parkway South) picked up an 8-1 win at the No. 2 spot over Khoa Trieu and Cameron Director.
The third doubles point for the Gorloks came at the No. 1 spot as sophomore
Riley Muren (O'Fallon, Mo./Illinois-Springfield) and junior
Charles McGhee (Waterloo, Ill./Waterloo) hung on for a hard-fought 8-6 win over Sebastian Culton and Blake Wisniewski.
Leading 3-0 heading into singles action, the Gorloks got its fourth point of the match as Bliss posted a 6-1, 6-1 win at the No. 5 singles spot of Darst and sealed the match win Shutzman's win at the No. 3 spot over Trieu. Shutzman defeated Trieu, 6-1, 6-0.
The Gorloks would earn its sixth win of the match at the No. 6 singles spot as Butler picked a hard-fought straight sets win over Coddington at the No. 6 spot as Butler won, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4. The singles win by Butler was his third of the season as he improved to 3-0 on the year.
Webster's other two singles win came at No. 1 and No. 4 spot as Muren held off Culton in straight set (7-5, 6-4) to earn his fifth win of the season at the top spot in the lineup and McGhee snapped a three match losing skid with his 6-0, 6-0 win over Brian Aach at the No. 4 spot.
Fontbonne would prevent a shutout win for the Gorloks as Wisniewski and Nation played a spirited, back-and-forth match at the No. 2 spot. Wisniewski opened the match with a 7-5 win in the first set and then hung on to post a 6-4 win in the second set to earn the Griffins' lone victory of the afternoon.
Webster will conclude this stretch of three matches in three days on Saturday, April 7 as they host St. Louis College of Pharmacy (1-5 on the season) in a 1 p.m. non-conference match at the Webster Groves Tennis Center.
