UCLA is slowly becoming one of the most enigmatic teams in
college tennis.
In convincing wins over quality teams, like Saturday’s 6-1
victory over Cal or last weekend’s 7-0 sweep of Washington,
UCLA has shown it is worthy of being considered a national
powerhouse.
But other times, particularly Friday’s 4-3 home loss to
Stanford, the Bruins have looked inexperienced and
lackadaisical.
And that’s not good, considering five of the six starters
are upperclassmen.
“I’ve tried so many different things,” said
head coach Billy Martin. “It has to be the guys who want it.
Our senior leadership has to take over. If I want it more than the
guys, something is wrong, and sometimes I feel that way.”
In pointing out the seniors, Martin refers to captains Erfan
Djahangiri and Rodrigo Grilli, who were the flattest of the flat
against Stanford. Both lost quickly in straight sets, and Martin
felt each lacked competitive fire from the get-go.
“I had a heart-to-heart talk with both Erfan and Rodrigo
(after Friday’s match),” Martin said. “I spoke my
piece, and they spoke theirs.”
Martin apparently told Djahangiri and Grilli that, as captains,
they need to bring competitive fire to every match, and dogging it
isn’t an option now with the NCAA Championships less than a
month away.
Djahangiri thought Martin’s critique was too harsh.
“Sometimes when you’re not on the court you don’t
realize it,” Djahangiri said. “We didn’t play
that bad, but (Martin) thought we played terrible.”
Djahangiri said that, with the better performance against Cal,
tensions have smoothed over between him and Martin.
“We just misunderstood each other,” Djahangiri said.
“It’s like with your dad, you are going to fight, but
it doesn’t mean you don’t like or respect him. We just
had an argument.”
Now, the aim of the team is to regroup and figure out what is
causing the inconsistency.
Each player acknowledged the problem, and the whole team
realizes that maintaining a high level in every match will be the
key to winning the championship.
“Right now I see us having a lot of ups and downs,”
said junior Tobias Clemens, the only player to record straight-set
wins against both Stanford and Cal.
“We have very high ups, but we can fall very low also. For
the NCAAs, we have to get together four good matches.”
Despite the troubles within the team this past weekend, Martin
isn’t ready to give up on the season yet. Even though the
team lost the Pac-10, they still feel the national championship is
within their reach.
“The Pac-10 doesn’t mean anything,” Djahangiri
said. “We wanted to win it, of course. But our goal is to win
the NCAAs.”
“Hopefully it’s not too late to learn a few
lessons,” Martin added. “I still think we have a great
chance to win the title.”