By Foster Nicholas | Sports Editor
In the heat of high-level competition, Baylor men’s tennis is already seeing the fruits of its labor pay off. After six days of prequalifying and qualifying at the ITA All-American Championships, the green and gold battled two doubles duos into the quarterfinals of the main draw on Thursday at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center in Tulsa, Okla.
Seniors Oskar Brostrom Poulsen and Marko Miladinović took to the court as a doubles duo just once before conquering the doubles ITA Summer Championships in August. With the victory, the pair locked in a main draw spot in the All-American Championships and qualified for the NCAA Fall Individual Championships, which Baylor will host in November.
The seniors opened their main draw doubles tournament Wednesday with a 7-5, 5-7, 10-6 win over preseason No. 25 doubles pair Carl Emil Overbeck and Theo Dean of UC Berkeley. Baylor’s unranked, unlikely duo kept the magic flowing on Thursday, taking down the preseason No. 5 duo of Maxwell Smith and Noa Vukadin, 7-6(2), 6-7(9), 10-6.
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The Clemson pair played Brostrom Poulson and Miladinović in a tight match, but the Bears’ second wave proved to be too much to overcome. The seniors weren’t the only Baylor doubles team to advance, though.
Junior Zsombor Velcz and sophomore Devin Badenhorst, the No. 26 doubles team, charged into the quarterfinals without dropping a set. Velcz and Badenhorst squeezed past Stanford’s nationally ranked No. 32 duo of Nicholas Godsick and Samir Banerjee, 7-6(5), 7-6(4), on Wednesday afternoon.
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Charging into Thursday night with momentum, the Baylor duo knocked off Michigan’s nationally ranked No. 17 tandem of Benjamin Kittay and Gavin Young, 7-6(9), 6-2.
The two Baylor doubles teams are on opposite sides of the bracket and wouldn’t face each other until the finals match if each team advances that far.
Velcz and Badenhorst will clash with No. 13 Alex Chang and Michael Wright of Berkeley, while Miladinovic and Brostrom Poulsen will face TCU’s Pedro Vives Marcos and Lui Maxted in their quarterfinals clash on Friday. The time of the first serve is still to be determined, but each match can be streamed on Cracked Racquets.
