AZUSA, Calif. – Playing on short rest was no problem for No. 6 Azusa Pacific, which defeated NAIA's No. 39 Arizona Christian 7-0 on Friday afternoon at the Munson & Bavougian Tennis Complex for the Cougars' fifth win in a row.
Less than 24 hours after a critical road win over Biola, the Cougars returned home to take care of business against a nationally-ranked team in the NAIA, winning all seven points.
Elias Emilio Walter won at the No. 1 position in both singles and doubles against a nationally-ranked opponent to highlight the win.
The Cougars are now 15-3 on the season while the Firestorm drops to 3-8 after the interdivisional match. Azusa Pacific now leads the all-time series 3-0.
Walter and
Soeren Grandke took out the No. 7 doubles team in the nation for the NAIA, beating Hugo Abril and Lennert Lemahiue, 6-4. The Cougars' No. 1 doubles team has now won all four matches that it has played against nationally-ranked opponents, including a win over the then-No. 1 doubles team in NCAA Division II.
Brody Bohren and
David James Brownlee won their doubles set at No. 2 doubles at about the same time, 6-3. It became a doubles sweep when
Miha Velicki and
Joan Crespo won their set, 6-4. Azusa Pacific struggled at the start of the season in doubles but now have a 32-18 mark as a team this season.
Grandke and Bohren each extended their singles winning streaks to five in a row, which is the longest on the team. Grandke won in just 46 minutes, 6-1, 6-0 for his 16th win of the season. Bohren moved up to No. 4 singles for the first time this season and won his match, 6-2, 6-3.
In singles, Walter faced the No. 27 player in the NAIA in Abril and only dropped five games in a 6-3, 6-2 win. With his 64
th career singles win, Walter surpasses David Goodman and ties Jakob Schnaitter for 12
th place on the all-time leaders list in program history.
David James Brownlee came through his match at No. 3 singles in a third-set superbreaker to improve to 4-0 when playing at the third spot.
Max Schmidhauser also won in three sets, taking the match at No. 5 singles, 6-2, 5-7, 10-4.
Albertus du Plessis picked up his fourth career singles win at No. 6 singles. He fought through a tough first set and won it 11-9 in the tiebreaker and then dominated the second set for a 7-6(9), 6-1 victory to complete the sweep.
The Cougars are right back in action on Saturday, hosting Westmont at 2 p.m. On Tuesday, Azusa Pacific will host Concordia in a battle of the top-2 teams in the PacWest weekly rankings, which are used for the seeding at the PacWest Championships.
