Andre Iriarte is in the midst of another drawn-out battle at the No. 2 singles spot.

He hugs the baseline and slams shot after shot with enough top spin to force his opponent into mistakes. Iriarte’s patience and persistence wins him another point after the opposition shoots the ball into the net or sends it flying out of bounds.

Iriarte has frustrated another opponent as he continues to grab wins to add to his 19-8 spring record over the past two years.

He uses the same patient style as one of his father’s favorite tennis players, Guilermo Vilas, used to become the only Argentine tennis player in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

“Every player develops their own style depending on their personality,” Raul Iriarte, Andre’s father, said. “[Andre’s] not an aggressive guy. I can teach players everything I know, but they’ll play the way they want to play and the way that works best for them.”

Raul taught his son how to play the game after Andre moved from Brazil, where his mother lived, to Rockville, Md., with his father.

The elder Iriarte was a member of the Bolivian team in the Davis Cup, the highest form of international team competition. He was the captain for Bolivia after turning down an offer to play for Chile.

Raul used his experience to teach his son to play the game, while he taught other kids on a clay court just outside Washington, D.C.

“I didn’t feel pressure to play, but I felt like that was what my dad was good at, so I should probably be good at it too,” Iriarte said.

Iriarte started playing later than most successful tennis players, first picking up a racket at age 11 after living in Brazil and playing soccer for most of his young life.

His father said he tried not to put too much pressure on Andre to be great right away.

“I tried to put the fact that I played professionally aside when I was teaching Andre,” Raul said. “It’s hard to teach your own kid. I tried never to play against him because I had nothing to prove.”

After several Division-I schools recruited him, Iriarte chose N.C. State because he wanted to be part of a building program.

“I was looking at other schools too, but one thing that really got me was the coaches and how they run the team,” Iriarte said. “I like their plan of action. I didn’t want to go to a team that’s already up there. I wanted a team that is building their way up there. That’s an accomplishment.”

For the majority of his young career, coaches encouraged Iriarte’s patient play. But when he arrived in Raleigh, he found that patience does not work all the time.

“I want to be patient but be aggressive when the time comes. I want to be able to flip the switch,” Iriarte said. “In juniors, I was more aggressive and they would tell me to be patient, and here in college they’re telling me to be more aggressive. It’s funny how things change.”

Coach Jon Choboy has worked to balance Iriarte’s patience with a new aggressiveness added on to keep the opponent on his heels.

“He hits the ball extremely clean and plays so fluidly,” Choboy said. “To become a premier player, he is developing his offensive game where he can come to the net when he needs to. To play at the top of the ACC you have to impose yourself on the opponent and that’s what he’s developing.”

Iriarte and sophomore Nick Cavaday are the two ranked members of the Wolfpack tennis team.

“All these matches from now on count to [the ranking], so it’s good to have a starting point,” Iriarte said.

Now Iriarte will continue to work hard to pound away at the other ranked competition he will be facing this year — pounding with patience, just as he has always done it.