The University of Denver men’s tennis team went 1-1 this past weekend to start the season.

The team fell to No. 52 Utah on Friday night 4-3 and then defeated No. 71 Montana State on Saturday 6-1.

Both sophomore Adam Holmstrom and junior Nejc Smole are undefeated for the season in singles while Smole and senior Steve Flaks are undefeated in doubles play.

Both Flaks and fellow senior Viktor Zetterholm lost in singles on Friday night but were able to come back and get wins on Saturday.

Holmstrom, the top-ranked player at DU and No. 28 in the nation, started the season by sweeping Tomasz Grzyb of Utah 6-1, 6-2.

One of Holmstrom’s goals this season is to go undefeated, and he kept that goal alive Saturday night as he defeated Federico Ueltschi of Montana State 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

After Friday’s match Holmstrom said, “It felt pretty good. I did my job that’s all.”

He added, “It’s very nice being ranked, there are a lot of good players that are not ranked. The goal is to be ranked as high as possible and do your best all the time.”

Another of Holmstrom’s goals is to break the record of 23 wins in a season and he has started the season on track to reach that goal.

DU’s other nationally ranked player, No. 92 ranked sophomore Niklas Persson, started the season with a 1-1 record after falling to Ganger of Utah on Friday 7-5, 7-6, (2-0).

But he then defeated Gebicki of Montana State 6-4, 7-6, (6-0).

Both Holmstrom and Persson were paired for doubles play and the duo defeated Ganger and Coutts from Utah 8-6 but fell to McDonald and Gebicki of Montana State 9-8 (4-0).

The other doubles pair for DU this weekend was Kalle Rosen and Zetterholm.

The senior-sophomore combo lost on Friday but came back and got the win on Saturday night to contribute to DU’s victory over Montana State.

Both nights Denver won two of the three doubles matches but the difference between the two nights came in the singles matches. On Friday night only Holmstrom and Smole recorded victories against Utah.

It was different on Saturday night as only freshman Aljosa Nipic failed to defeat his opponent and Denver took the other five singles matches to upset Montana State 6-1.

Denver Head Coach Geoff Young has high hopes for this season.

He said, “We hope to win the Sun Belt Conference. I feel like we have a talented enough team to do that, we need to get better and better as the season goes on.”

Commenting on Friday’s defeat Young said, “Considering it’s the first match of the year I think we did pretty well.”

Denver will next face Washington this Friday and UC Santa Barbara this Saturday. Both matches are in Seattle.