RIVERSIDE, Calif.—The UC Riverside Tennis Team (3-2) made some noise in its home opener Friday afternoon as the Highlanders bested an undefeated Air Force team (3-1) collecting four singles wins and taking the match in walk-off fashion.

"This is a great early season win for us," Head Coach Mattias Johansson said. "We played well in doubles, but couldn't finish it out, so our singles had to step up and I thought they played really well today."

Both teams came to compete in the doubles round as UCR held match point on multiple occasions, but the Falcons would steal the first point of the day taking all three matches. The Highlanders would need four wins in singles to take the overall match.

Junior Gilbert Chung was quick off the courts in singles play icing the overall match with a dominant 6-1, 6-1 win on court four over the Falcons' Tadhg Collins, but Air Force would respond taking courts three and five to regain the lead.

Trailing 3-1, UCR continued to battle on the remaining courts until freshman Andreas Whelan-Merediz came through victorious over Mack Galvin in a 6-3, 6-4 affair on court six for his second career singles win.

The match would be put on two of the Highlanders' captains, senior Kyle McCann and junior Nabil Abdallah playing on courts one and two, respectively.

The first set on court one proved to be a battle between McCann and Patrick Sklenka, but through a collection of hard fought points and shot making, McCann would emerge on top giving him momentum heading into the second set. The Highlander senior would tie the overall match at 3-3 with his 7-6, 6-3 triumph.

With the other matches finished, both teams and all fans in attendance gathered around court two and encouraged Abdallah after every point. After besting Luke Sanderson in the first set, Abdallah held the advantage in the second as well, but the Falcon would not go away battling to a tie break, which he would win 7-4 forcing a third and final set.

Abdallah rocketed out of the third set taking a 3-0 lead, but again Sanderson would hang around forcing the Highlander to compete and coming back to trail just 4-3. The two would split the next pair of games moving to a score of 5-4 and behind some great shot making, Abdallah would force a few balls passed Sanderson, who crowded the net, to take the final matchup 6-4, 6-7, 6-4.

The courts erupted on the final point as the Highlanders would pull off the 4-3 win without the doubles point, thanks to four brilliant singles matches.

UC Riverside will now hit the road for all of February where the team will play eight road/nuetral matches. The trip begins at Southern Utah next Thursday.