BATON ROUGE — Despite good play on the doubles courts, the No. 24-ranked LSU’s men’s tennis team was unable to upend top-ranked Georgia on Sunday, dropping a, 6-1, decision to the Bulldogs at W. T. Robinson Tennis Stadium.
The Tigers’ fall to 8-4 and 1-1 in SEC play after the loss. Georgia (11-0, 2-0 SEC) kept its record unblemished.
The doubles matches featured some of the day’s most competitive action. The Tigers No. 1 doubles tandem of Mark Growcott and Ken Skupski ran into a familiar wall in the Georgia combo John Isner and Antonio Ruiz.
Isner and Ruiz beat Growcott and Skupski in last season’s NCAA Doubles Final to claim the national championship. The Georgia duo got the best of Growcott and Skupski again Sunday, winning 8-3.
LSU picked up a doubles win on court three, where senior Paul White and freshman James Cluskey jumped up early and rolled past Georgia’s tandem of Luis Flores and Matic Omerzal, 8-4.
The doubles point came down to the result on court No. 2, where 28th-ranked Colt Gaston and Danny Bryan of LSU battled No. 7-ranked Strahinja Bobusic and Colin Purcell.
Bryan and Gaston rallied after going down 0-2, winning the next five games. However, Bobusic and Purcell were able to recover and go on a run of their own. The Georgia pair took six straight games to win the match and seal the doubles point for their team. It was only the second doubles dual match loss in Gaston and Bryan’s career.
“We couldn’t pull out the doubles matches today and that really hurt our momentum heading in to the singles matches,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “It may not have been enough change the final outcome, but I think things could have gone much differently if we had been able to close out in doubles.”
It was all Bulldogs in singles play. Georgia claimed wins in five of the six matches.
Gaston was saddled with the tough task of facing Isner, the nation’s No. 1 singles player, on court two. Gaston had difficulty in dealing with the 6-9 Isner’s massive serve, losing the match in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3.
The rest of the Tigers’ singles players struggled as well. 20th-ranked Ken Skupski fell in two sets to Flores on court No. 1. Bryan had his three match-winning streak snapped, losing to 37th-ranked Strahinja Bobusic, 6-2, 6-2.
One bright spot for LSU was the play of Growcott, the lone senior in the singles lineup, who gave the Tigers’ their only point of the match, winning, 6-4, 7-5, over Ruiz on court three.
LSU will continue SEC play against a pair of Eastern Division foes this week. The team will head to Lexington, Ky. on Friday to face the Kentucky Wildcats, before traveling to Nashville on Sunday to take on Vanderbilt.
#24 LSU vs. #1 Georgia
Georgia 6, LSU 1
Singles
#21 Luis Flores, Georgia def. #20 Ken Skupski, LSU 6-3, 6-4
#1 John Isner, Georgia def. Colt Gaston, LSU 6-2, 6-3
Mark Growcott, LSU def. Antonio Ruiz, Georgia 6-4, 7-5
#37 Strahinja Bobusic, Georgia def. Danny Bryan, LSU 6-2, 6-2
#72 Matic Omerzal, Georgia def. James Cluskey, LSU 6-3, 6-4
Colin Purcell, Georgia def. Kevin Dessauer, LSU 6-2, 6-1
Doubles
#34 Isner/Ruiz, Georgia def. #18 Growcott/Skupski, LSU 8-3
#7 Bobusic/Purcell, Georgia def. #28 Danny Bryan/Colt Gaston, LSU 8-5
Cluskey/White, LSU def. Flores/Omerzal, Georgia 8-4