The North Carolina men’s tennis team had gone 13 days since its last match before sweeping a doubleheader on Saturday against Navy and The Citadel. If there was any rust, it didn’t show.
The No. 23 Tar Heels beat Navy 7-0 in the morning in Chapel Hill, came back and beat The Citadel 7-0 in the afternoon, and are now off until a showdown with No. 1 Ohio State in Columbus on Friday.
UNC played both matches without some of its top players, including No. 21 Ronnie Schneider, No. 39 Brett Clark and senior Nelson Vick, coach Sam Paul said he sat the players partly due to NCAA regulations and partly for the sake of getting some of the lower-ranked players additional experience.
Paul said the day was valuable for the whole team, and he liked the aggressiveness the Tar Heels showed, especially in the match against The Citadel.
“I liked our focus in singles coming out,” he said. “I didn’t really like our doubles necessarily.”
The match against Navy was held outside, marking the first time this season the Tar Heels have played outdoors at home.
Freshman Brayden Schnur said playing outdoors can be a completely different game than indoors.
“Outdoors, you see the true players come out,” Schnur said. “You can see who can piece the whole game together.”
Schnur, who is 9-0 as a Tar Heel, won all four of his matches on Saturday, including two doubles wins with teammate Oystein Steiro and two singles wins in straight sets.
