For most athletes, their favorite athletic moment involves
themselves. This trend, however, doesn’t hold for junior
tennis player Tobias Clemens.
“My favorite moment was when we beat ‘SC last year
at their place and Lassi (Ketola) won the deciding match,” he
said, “I know Lassi, he’s a good friend of mine, my
doubles partner, and to see him winning that deciding match when he
was down was really great satisfaction for me.”
That’s the kind of guy Clemens is. Team before self. With
all the great matches he’s played, and won, his favorite
moment was actually Ketola’s finest hour.
“It means that he’s into the team,” Ketola
explained. “It’s great to see that the team is the most
important thing to him.”
It’s hard to believe, but at one point, it was far from
certain that Clemens would be a part of this UCLA team.
A native of Bonn, Germany, Clemens grew up playing soccer and
tennis without any thoughts of the American college system. After
finishing high school, he completed his mandatory military service,
in which he was able to play tennis, and then started playing small
European tournaments without great success.
His coming to Westwood was predicated upon a random sequence of
events.
“It was pretty short notice,” Clemens said. “A
guy that graduated from Duke came up to me and said, “˜Why
don’t you go to college? It’s a great opportunity
there.’Â And I didn’t know about that.
“So I was looking into that and I realized they could
finance my whole education plus I could play tennis. As soon as I
heard UCLA was interested in me, I broke off all other
connections.”
The recruiting process wasn’t terribly extensive.
“I don’t think I had to heavily recruit him,”
coach Billy Martin explained. “We just had to show him that
UCLA was a good fit for him.”
And a good fit it has proven to be.
During his first two seasons, Clemens blossomed into the player
that he is today, currently ranked No. 6 in the nation.
“He’s improved not only his game, but his maturity
on the court,” Martin says, “He’s a very
competitive, high-strung kid.”
Martin believes this competitive drive has allowed Clemens to
thrive at the No. 1 singles position.
“He’s certainly done a great job with his record at
No. 1 singles, which is, without a doubt, the hardest spot to fill.
There are no easy matches,” he said.
Especially when the person you’re staring at on the other
side of the net is Pete Sampras, a player who has won more Grand
Slam titles than any other.
Struggling with his game during his freshman season, Martin
hooked Clemens up with Sampras, the brother of UCLA’s
women’s tennis coach, Stella Sampras Webster, to boost his
confidence.
“Playing with Pete is the best feeling,” Clemens
said, “He’s like what Michael Jordan is to basketball
and Wayne Gretzky is to hockey. And if you get a chance to play
with somebody like that, it’s just a rush. It’s
awesome.”
So is riding in his car and meeting Sampras’ wife.
“He actually drove me home once. I was sitting in the back
of his BMW, and in the front was Pete Sampras and Bridgette Wilson.
I wish my friends could’ve seen me,” he said.
His friends can see him around school, a place where Clemens
takes great pride in his work. In fact, the main reason he chose
UCLA was because of its superior academics.
“UCLA is a big name in Europe as far as academics
go,” Clemens explained.
Academics are so important that Clemens has no intentions of
leaving school early to pursue professional tennis dreams.
“I will definitely come back to school,” he said.
“I want to finish my education first, and maybe then
I’ll give (pro tennis) a try. But right now education is
definitely my top priority.”
Martin is confident his No. 1 player will hang around.
“I’m not worried at all about Toby not coming back
for next year,” he says. “He’s very committed to
getting his degree here. He’s a good
student-athlete.”
Because Clemens is such a good student, he doesn’t see his
whole life being spent on tennis.
“I think it would be a pity for my character if I was only
depending upon tennis,” he explains, “I hope for myself
that I can manage to shift the focus of my life to something else.
I think everybody should develop other interests.”
But right now, his primary interest is a team championship for
the No. 3 Bruins.
“My top goal is to win the team championship,” he
says, “The team is the top priority, for everything we do and
everything I do.”
Team first. That’s Toby for you.