Pisaric and Poertner earn WCC weekly tennis honors
A couple of first-year Pepperdine Waves men’s tennis players snagged West Coast Conference weekly awards last week.
Freshman Aleksa Pisaric, who is from Serbia, won the WCC Singles Player of the Week on Feb. 4, and he and his classmate and doubles partner, Lasse Poertner, who is from Germany, garnered the conference’s Doubles Team of the Week honor on the same day.
The awards stem from the duo’s play in the Waves’ victories over Loyola Marymount University and ninth-ranked Texas A&M the first two days of this month at Pepperdine’s Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center.
Poertner and Pisaric’s doubles wins occurred in dominant fashion, and Pisaric’s singles wins secured victories for the Waves.
In Pepperdine’s 4-0 win over LMU on Feb. 1, the twosome defeated Yousef Sadek and Nikola Kuraica 6-1. Poertner and Pisaric broke the LMU pair on the deciding point in the fourth game to grab a 3-1 lead. The Waves held serve for the match with Poertner serving on the deciding point. LMU returned Poertner’s backhand long.
Poertner and Pisaric beat Tiago Pires and Matthis Ross 6-3 in the Waves’ 6-1 triumph over Texas A&M the next day. The Waves forced deciding point in the fourth game and broke Texas A&M off a double fault. Poertner and Pisaric then got four straight points to take a 4-2 lead. Pepperdine won the match when Texas A&M returned Pisaric’s serve wide.
Pisaric defeated Sadek 6-4, 6-2 in singles play in the Waves’ LMU victory. The win was Pisaric’s first on Pepperdine’shome court. Pisaric broke through in the seventh game to snag a 4-3 advantage, and then the match was played on serve for him to win the first set. The Wave broke his opponent in the third game of the second set and increased his lead. Pisaric broke Sadek to take a 5-2 lead and went on to victory.
Against Tokac in the Texas A&M matchup, Pisaric lost the first set 4-6, but won the second 6-4. Pisaric gained the advantage in the third game with a break-point winner. He broke Tokac in the final game for a 6-3 win.
Pepperdine defeated Arizona State 4-3 on Feb. 6. The squad was beaten 4-0 by Arizona three days later.
The Waves have a 5-3 record heading into their home match against USC on Friday at 2 p.m. Pepperdine plays at UCLA in Los Angeles on Sunday at 1 p.m.