No. 1 UVA Men's Tennis Earns Third-Straight Sweep, Downs Liberty 7-0

The defending national champion Cavaliers have yet to surrender a single point through their first three matches of the season

Olivia Taylor/Virginia Athletics

The No. 1-ranked Virginia men's tennis team has begun the 2023 spring season with three consecutive sweeps, as the Cavaliers went to Lynchburg on Thursday afternoon and earned a 7-0 sweep over Liberty. 

Inaki Montes and Ryan Goetz downed Lynchburg's Beau Pelletier and Zion Heaven 6-3 and then Chris Rodesch and Bar Botzer defeated Josh Wilson and Christiaan Worst 6-2 to seal the doubles point for Virginia. The match between UVA's Jeffrey von der Schulenburg/Alexander Kiefer and Deji Thomas-Smith/Luis Felipe Miguel went unfinished. 

Inaki Montes then earned a clean sweep over Christiaan Worst in singles play, winning 6-0, 6-0. Ryan Goetz followed that up with a smooth 6-1, 6-2 win over Luis Felipe Miguel to make it 3-0 in favor of the Cavaliers. Chris Rodesch had the honor of clinching the winning point for Virginia, winning 6-2, 6-4 against Josh Wilson on court 1. 

Although the match was already decided, the other three individual singles matches were closely contested. Freshman Mans Dahlberg continued his hot start to his career with a hard-fought 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 victory over Thando Longwe-Smit on court 6. Jeffrey von der Schulenburg defeated Liberty's Deji Thomas-Smith 6-1, 7-6 (7-4). And on court 5, Bar Botzer won a thriller over Zion Heaven 6-2, 4-6, 1-0 (21-19) to complete UVA's 7-0 sweep. 

Now 3-0 on the season, the defending national champions will get their first big test of the season as Virginia hosts No. 11 Baylor on Sunday at 1pm at Boar's Head. 

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