April 7, 2017
Complete Results
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation Jimmy Bendeck has dreamed of moments like Friday night, when the Baylor sophomore had the whole match and seemingly the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Down 3-1 at one point, 16th-ranked Oklahoma knotted it up with three-set wins by Spencer Papa and Adrian Oetzbach at Nos. 1 and 6 singles, respectively. That left it to Bendeck and the Sooners' Arnaud Restifo to settle things on Court 5 at the Hurd Tennis Center.
"That's my favorite thing in the world," Bendeck said. "That's why I play tennis more than anything. I love big crowds, I love competing."
Coming back from a break down three times in the third set, Bendeck hit back-to-back service winners to hold his serve at love and then pulled out a 7-6(6), 5-7, 7-5 win with a perfectly placed backhand lob that landed on the baseline and just out of Restifo's reach.
Mobbed by his teammates on the court, Bendeck was visibly emotional after picking up his 12th dual-match victory and 23rd overall, with the third-ranked Bears pulling out a 4-3 win over the Sooners (12-9, 0-3) in their Big 12 opener.
"There's a lot of pressure when it's 3-all," Bendeck said. "It makes it easy, though, when you have your teammates and 400 people or something like that cheering for me on every point, helping me out. If I didn't have those people, I wouldn't have gotten through the match. They were special."
Baylor coach Matt Knoll, whose team improved to 20-3 with its seventh straight win, said Bendeck "played with a lot of courage."
"He had a lot of chances to go away and didn't play his best tennis," Knoll said. "Honestly, I don't know that Jimmy would tell you he played his best tennis at any stage. I think he did that, and that's what you do as an athlete, you just dig in and you fight. I think he dug in and he fought, and fortunately things went his way."
The Bears, who had lost five in a row against the Sooners, seemed to have things in control when they took the opening doubles point and won four of the six first sets in singles.
Baylor's No. 3 team of Max Tchoutakian and Constantin Frantzen rolled over Restifo and Oetzbach, 6-1, then Bendeck and Johannes Schretter clinched the doubles with a 6-2 victory over 61st-ranked Alex Ghilea and Florin Bragusi at No. 3.
"I think the energy of our team in doubles was unbelievable, the best I think of the year," Bendeck said. "Johannes, my doubles partner, did an unbelievable job. He pushed me through so well. I didn't feel confident in the beginning, and he really helped me stay on the court and helped me do what I wanted to do."
The 74th-ranked Schretter kept the momentum on Baylor's side, getting off the court in a hurry with a 6-0, 6-1 win over the 82nd-ranked Brugusi at No. 3. Ghilea answered by dominating Tchoutakian, 6-1, 6-2, at No. 2, but Will Little pushed the Bears' lead to 3-1 with a straight-set win over Jochen Bertsch, 6-2, 6-2, at No. 4.
"Those guys are doing a great job. They were getting a lot of balls on the court," Knoll said of Schretter and Little. "Tennis isn't a complicated game. It's easy to make it complicated, but those guys were making a lot of balls and fighting really hard and being disciplined. And it paid off."
Papa got a late service break at No. 1, upsetting 10th-ranked Juan Benitez, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3. Then, Oetzbach tied up the match when he fought off four break points in the last game and finished off a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over Frantzen at No. 6 to tie it up at 3-3.
"I think it always gives you confidence when you win when you don't feel like you played great, particularly against a quality opponent," Knoll said. "I think the guys are going to feel like, `Hey, we're going to have a chance on any day.' Everybody's got to paddle, and today different guys paddled and we got it done."
In a quick turnaround, Baylor will host eighth-ranked Oklahoma State (19-4, 2-1) at 2 p.m. Sunday. Making a Texas swing, the Cowboys knocked off Texas Tech, 4-1, Friday in Lubbock.
"They're a super good team, a top-10 team, really experienced, a lot of older guys," Knoll said of OSU. "We have a lot of respect for them, and it's going to be a tough day."
THE RUNDOWN
WACO, Texas -- The third-ranked Baylor men's tennis team used a three-set singles victory from sophomore
Jimmy Bendeck to knock off No. 16 Oklahoma, 4-3, in its opening Big 12 conference match Friday at the Hurd Tennis Center.
The contest between the Big 12's two best programs over the past five years went down to the wire with BU coming away victorious by the slimmest of margins.
The 120th-ranked Bendeck, playing at the No. 5 singles position against Arnaud Restifo, had won the first set 7-6(6), but suffered a 5-7 setback in the second.
When all the attention turned to Bendeck, he was breaking Restifo to tie the third set at one game apiece. From that point, the players traded breaks again, before four-straight games of holds to put the third set score at 4-4. Restifo then broke for a 5-4 lead, but the BU sophomore broke right back to tie it at 5-5.
Next, Bendeck held at love for a 6-5 advantage. With a 15-40 lead on Restifo's serve, Bendeck worked to his left and lobbed a backhand that landed on the baseline and out of the reach of the Sooner to to take the third set, 7-5, and give the Bears the win.
To open the match, the Bears rolled to a victory in the doubles point. Baylor jumped out to early advantages on each of the three courts and never looked back. At the No. 3 spot, Max Tchoutakian and Constantin Frantzen produced a 6-1 triumph over Adrian Oetzbach and Restifo.
When that match concluded, Bendeck and Johannes Schretter had opened up a 5-1 lead on court two against No. 61 Alex Ghilea and Florin Bragusi. After losing on OU's service game, Bendeck held serve in the next game on the deuce point to give the Bears the early 1-0 advantage.
Baylor quickly added to that lead as the 74th-ranked Schretter made quick work of No. 82 Bragusi, 6-0, 6-1 at the No. 3 spot.
The Sooners got their first point of the night when the 41st-ranked Tchoutakian was upset by No. 52 Ghilea, 6-1, 6-2, at No. 2 singles.
On court four, Will Little dispatched of Jochen Bertsch, 6-2, 6-2, to push the BU lead to 3-1, but moments later 10th-ranked Juan Benitez lost to No. 20 Spencer Papa, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3, at the top of the lineup to bring the score to 3-2 BU.
That left two matches on court to decide the outcome. Baylor led in both contests with Bendeck enjoying a 7-6(6), 3-3 advantage on court five and Frantzen holding a 6-2, 4-6, 2-1 edge at the bottom of the lineup.
Oklahoma knotted the team score at 3-3 almost 45 minutes after cutting it to 3-2. Frantzen's lead on court six evaporated and he lost to Oetzbach in three sets, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.
OTHER NOTABLES
- Baylor upped its record to 20-3 on the season and 1-0 in Big 12 play, while dropping Oklahoma to 12-9 and 0-3 in conference play.
- BU is 110-23 all-time in Big 12 regular season play.
- Baylor is 16-5 all-time in Big 12 openers.
- Baylor has now won at least 20 matches in 14 of the last 16 years.
- BU snapped a five-match losing streak vs. OU.
- Baylor still trails the all-time series 25-21 against the Sooners.
- Baylor improved to 9-0 in home matches in 2017.
TOP QUOTE #1
"At the end I figured out what I wanted to do. He adjusted his game in the second set, which helped him out. Coach Knoll and Mike figured out strategies that would work and I stuck to the strategy. Point by point, I realized I would score more than him." - Jimmy Bendeck on how he won the match
TOP QUOTE #2
"Being in that tough position is my favorite thing in the world. That's why I play tennis. I love big crowds, I love competing, I dream of those moments." - Bendeck on playing the clinching match
TOP QUOTE #3
"It was a great atmosphere, that's the whole idea. We want it to be like a basketball game or a football game and allow people to come and have fun and I thought it was great. The rule has evolved to figure it out and we did it the way the rule's evolved. The fans had fun and I thought it was great," - head coach Matt Knoll on the atmosphere at the match
TOP QUOTE #4
"Jimmy played with a lot of courage. There were many chances for him to put it away. He didn't play his best tennis and he played a guy who was playing really well in spurts and he found a way." - Knoll on Jimmy Bendeck
WHAT'S NEXT
Baylor will continue Big 12 play by hosting No. 8 Oklahoma State Sunday at 2 p.m. The Cowboys are 18-4 and 2-1 in conference action after beating Texas Tech, 4-1, on Friday.
The first 200 fans in attendance at the match will receive a free t-shirt.
For more information on the Baylor men's tennis team all season long, follow the team's official Twitter and Instagram account: @BaylorMTennis.
