It was a successful season-opening weekend for the men?s tennis team, as the Hornets were able to defeat the University of Nevada, Reno 7-0 on Friday, and UC Davis 6-1 on Sunday afternoon.

The Hornets opened the contest against UC Davis with a sweep of doubles play competition. Sherif Zaher and Joseph Gilbert teamed up to win 8-4, Kevin Vieira and Sylvain Iff defeated their opponents 8-2, and Chris Smith and Fabio Jesus won their match 8-4.

“I thought the doubles teams played well,” head coach Chris Evers said. “Iff and Vieira played well together in doubles play.”

Singles play followed the doubles matches, where Sac State came out and won five of its singles matches. The lone loss came in the number one singles match, with Greg Lee of Davis defeating Zaher 6-1, 3-6, 7-5. Zaher, after losing the first set 6-1, was down 3-0 in the second set before coming back and winning 6-3, and forcing a third and final set.”He could have easily folded, but he came back,” Evers said.

Zaher stepped it up and played well in the final set before losing 7-5. He let his emotions get the best of him and got into a shouting match with the umpire. Zaher was assessed a penalty when he took too long to return from the bathroom. This allowed Lee to gain the momentum to come back and get the only victory for Davis.

“Zaher got caught up with the ump,” Evers said. “This allowed Lee to get a little head of steam.”

In another match, Sac State?s senior Smith, was able to out-duel his opponent in a three set victory, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.

“Smitty lost to his opponent last year, and then this year he was able to come back and beat him,” Evers said.

Jesus, who has been out for three months with injuries, played his first singles match of the season and gained the win, 6-2, 6-4, 4-6.

“It will take him a few weeks before he gets back to match play,” Evers said.

Evers thought that UC Davis stacked its lineup, trying to make it harder for the Hornets.

“The heart of the lineup is playing well,” Evers said. “Overall we definitely played well, but we need to improve. They (the Hornets) made it a little harder than they should have.”

Friday afternoon the Hornets hosted and defeated Reno, 7-0.

“Reno is a pretty good team, better than they were last year,” Evers said.

The Hornets swept their singles matches and won two of the three doubles matches. Zaher and Gilbert were defeated 6-8 in doubles play.

In singles play, the Hornets lost only one set in the six singles matches it played.”Singles wise, we played real good,” Evers said.

In the number one singles match, Zaher won 6-3, 6-1. In the number two singles match, Smith downed his opponent 7-6, 7-5, and Gilbert and Vieira combined to win 24 of the 29 games played in their two matches.

“We definitely need to play well and work on stuff,” Evers said. “We?re playing pretty good, but some guys are playing better than others.”

The team will now have a couple of weeks off, with no matches until March. During this time, Evers hopes to get an opponent to play during this time.”