THOUSAND OAKS “”mdash; The season hasn’t started yet, but
the UCLA men’s tennis team has already sent a message.
Three Bruins advanced to the semifinals of the weekend’s
Sherwood Collegiate Cup, held at Sherwood Country Club, and with
Luben Pampoulov’s three-set victory over teammate Benjamin
Kohlloeffel in Monday’s final, a Bruin has won the event in
each of the past four seasons.
“I think everyone in college tennis knows that UCLA is one
of the teams that has a good shot at winning the NCAA
tournament,” said assistant coach Jason Sher, who was proud
of how both players competed in yesterday’s championship.
“I think people are certainly well aware of us.”
In a tournament that included defending Pac-10 champion Sam
Warburg from Stanford, several members from defending national
champion Baylor, and the top players from USC, it was Pampoulov and
Kohlloeffel who advanced all the way through the talented 32-player
field.
And in the end, it was Pampoulov’s resolve that carried
him to the title on a blustery day at Sherwood.
Trailing 4-1 in the third set, the senior fought all the way
back, winning five straight games to win the match, 7-5, 4-6,
6-4.
“It was hard,” Pampoulov said of his third-set
comeback. “The good thing was that I stopped thinking too
much about what the score was, and I just started focusing on the
next point.”
Though Kohlloeffel and Pampoulov are good friends and doubles
teammates, both clearly wanted to win Monday’s
championship.
But Pampoulov, who sat out a season before joining the team last
March, was too tough down the stretch.
“The match was okay,” said Kohlloeffel, a sophomore
competing in his first season at UCLA.
“It was pretty tough with the wind, and you’re
always kind of upset if you lose after being up 4-1.”
For a large portion of Monday’s third set, it looked as if
the Sherwood title would remain a German possession.
Won by Tobias Clemens for the past three seasons, Kohlloeffel,
who will look to effectively replace Clemens in the starting
lineup, looked poised to seize control of the tournament after
winning the second set. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“Luben hung in there, in showing his mental
toughness,” Sher said. Pampoulov was also quite complimentary
of his teammate after the match.
Calling Kohlloeffel the best player he faced in the tournament
and a better player than Clemens, Pampoulov seems ready to make a
championship run with his new teammate. And he’s happy with
his own play as well.
“It’s good to have some match experience and to be
successful, of course,” he said. “It gives me some more
confidence going into the season.”
Bruin sophomore Philipp Gruendler had one of the most impressive
results of the tournament, defeating Warburg, ranked No. 4
nationally, in the quarterfinals. Junior Chris Lam lost in the
quarterfinals to Baylor’s Lars Poerschke.