The Bruins could taste it. They were so close to taking the
doubles point from the No. 1 team in the land, so close to heading
into singles with a 1-0 lead.
UCLA’s No. 1 doubles team of Kris Kwinta and Alberto
Francis had Illinois’s Phil Stolt and Brian Wilson on the
ropes.
Francis was serving, his team up 6-5 in the set, 40-15 in the
game. The Bruins had won the doubles match on court No. 3 and lost
on court No. 2.
Then it happened.
UCLA allowed Illinois to battle back to deuce and later take the
game, tying the set 6-6. Stolt and Wilson went on to win 9-7, and
Illinois cruised to three straight-set victories in singles to take
the ITA Indoor Championship match 4-0.
The Bruins were left to simply wonder what could have been.
“That’s what broke me down,” Kwinta said.
“We were one point away. Winning that match would’ve
given us a good shot to win the whole thing.”
But as things went, Kwinta essentially mailed in his singles
match, too drained from three straight days of matches and too
heartbroken from the doubles loss.
“My body was refusing to play,” he said.
“Mentally I was just so exhausted.”
Doubles can have that effect on teams.
In collegiate tennis, three doubles matches are played to eight
games, with the first team to win two of the matches securing one
point of seven awarded in the overall match.
“It’s more mental than anything,” coach Billy
Martin said. “You have three teams fighting with everyone
watching, and winning that point gives you a mental
edge.”
But it’s certainly not requisite for a team victory, as
UCLA proved twice at the Indoors. The Bruins came back to defeat
both Kentucky and Ole Miss after losing the doubles point.
In the team’s Feb. 5 match against Kentucky, UCLA had
match points on courts No. 2 and No. 3 in doubles, needing only one
win to secure the team point.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, it didn’t happen on either
court, and the team entered singles trailing 1-0.
“We were devastated after losing doubles to
Kentucky,” Martin said. “We had it, but we just flirted
it away. It felt like someone pulled a rug right out from under
us.”
Though the Bruins were twice able to recover in singles play,
they weren’t so fortunate against the No. 1 Fighting
Illini.
“Against tough teams, one more (singles victory) is a
tough mountain to climb,” Martin said.
MATCH CANCELLATION: The Bruins’ scheduled
match against Loyola Marymount on Saturday has been cancelled. LMU
felt that it couldn’t field a competitive team, according to
a UCLA spokesman. The Bruins have added a match to the schedule for
Feb. 17 against BYU.