M. tennis receives automatic bid to NCAA tourney
By Sarah Harrison
The men’s NCAA Tennis Regional Championships will be held in the
Los Angeles Tennis Center this weekend for the second consecutive
year. However, the UCLA men’s tennis team will be sitting this one
out.
No. 4 UCLA automatically received a bid for the NCAA
Championships, so it can practice this weekend instead of playing
in the regional tournament.
"The Regionals serve no point for us," UCLA head coach Billy
Martin said. "It would have been good to have the home court
advantage if we were going to have to play in the tournament. Since
we have already qualified, they are not quite a nuisance, but they
will prevent us from practicing on our courts."
Forced to practice elsewhere, the Bruins will probably go to the
Sycamore courts off campus, which are slightly faster than the
courts in the LATC.
"We may be able to get a little doubles practice in with another
team from the tournament, but, other than that, we will just go
through our normal routine," Martin said.
This is a very different scenario from last year, when the
Bruins needed to win the Regional tournament to advance. Last year,
UCLA qualified for the Championships after beating Arizona 4-0 and
Pepperdine 4-3.
This year, the Bruins can breathe a sigh of relief and watch to
see who out of the six teams will join them.
The No. 1 seed in the tournament is 14th-ranked California,
which will have a bye in the first round along with the No. 2 seed
UNLV. The University of San Diego, Washington, UC Irvine and
Arizona are the No. 3, 4, 5 and 6 seeds respectively.
Stanford, Pepperdine and USC also received automatic bids, so
they will not have to attend the tournament either. Instead of
worrying about regionals they, along with the Bruins, can begin
focusing on the NCAA Championships.