Tied at 3, the closest match of the season for both Texas and TCU came down to a final set. A top 15 matchup headlined by No. 1 senior Eliot Spizzirri, with a chance at a momentous win for the Longhorns.
But at 4-4, Fearnley broke serve and consolidated, winning the match 4-6, 7-6, 6-4. TCU remained at No. 2, and Texas suffered yet another heartbreak against a top team.
“The guy served unreal,” Texas men’s tennis head coach Bruce Berque said on March 22. “There was nothing more that Eliot really could’ve done that day.”
This marked the Longhorns’ third top-15 loss of the season, with losses to then-No. 1 Virginia and then-No. 14 Arizona previously. Among all the losses, there was one common denominator.
“We weren’t winning the doubles point against the top teams,” Berque said. “And in particular, Cleeve (Harper) and Eliot had hit a little bit of a slump.”
For Texas’ premier doubles team, this was a major aberration. After finishing as the No. 2 doubles team in the nation last year, the pair began the 2024 season 3–5. The team in total was struggling too, as it only had a 7–5 doubles record and went 3–3 against top 25 opponents. With No. 1 Ohio State coming to town the following Saturday, the Longhorns desperately needed a spark.
Enter senior Siem Woldeab.
Although he’d been out with injury since January, his role became even larger upon returning, as he was moved to No. 1 doubles with Spizzirri. Harper moved down to No. 3, rotating between playing with senior Micah Braswell and freshman Lucas Brown.
Spizzirri and Woldeab played together from 2019 to 2022, and in their final two years, they finished No. 7 and No. 9 nationwide, respectively. Braswell and Harper had also been a past doubles team, and Texas looked to use the two senior pairs’ longstanding chemistry to ignite a turnaround.
If there was one season-defining moment, it was the doubles set tiebreak against Ohio State between Spizzirri and Woldeab and No. 5 pair of seniors JJ Tracy and Robert Cash, with the winner claiming the doubles point.
In front of a highly energized crowd in Austin, Spizzirri and Woldeab came back from a 4-5 deficit to win 7-5 and gain the doubles point. The Longhorns took this momentum and ran away with the match, winning 5-2 and marking the beginning of an incredible win streak.
Along with this match, Texas has won its last nine matches convincingly, including three top-12 victories and a streak of four straight sweeps from March 17-28. The most notable win was a 5-0 drubbing of TCU in a rematch hosted in Austin. And in doubles, the team didn’t drop a single point from then on.
With this past Saturday’s win against No. 9 Oklahoma, Texas clinched at least a share of the Big 12 regular season championship and completed a vault from No. 12 to No. 4 in the latest ITA rankings. The Longhorns will finish the regular season against Baylor on Saturday in Austin before the Big 12 tournament next weekend in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where they seek their first title since 2018.
