Freshmen Robin Anderson and Skyler Morton won their first competition as a doubles team at the USTA/ITA Southwest Regional Championships.
Denom Anderson was tired of all the jokes.
The laughing stock of his group of friends, Anderson decided to recruit a tennis partner to gain the respect of his peers who constantly harassed him about his lack of tennis prowess. Anderson decided to stay local, electing his 5-year-old daughter, Robin, as his training buddy.
Little did he know, 13 years later, that buddy would become one of the top freshman tennis players in the country.
“My dad actually started me in tennis because his friends didn’t think he was good enough to play with them, so he needed someone to hit with and taught me to play,” 18-year-old UCLA freshman Robin Anderson said with a smile.
Anderson’s early tennis lessons with her dad were unconventional to say the least.
“When I first started playing tennis, my dad actually taught me to play in my living room,” Anderson said. “He would stand on one side and toss me a foam ball, and I would just sit there and swing with my racket, and I had to use a foam ball because I did not want to break anything.”
Last year, the Matawan, N.J., native made her college choice between UCLA, Duke and Stanford.
“I didn’t even think I was going to consider (UCLA) to be honest,” Anderson said. “But I figured that when I came out here for Easter Bowl or hard courts that I’d come out and visit, and I really liked it, so I took an official visit here, and then I committed.”
UCLA freshman Skylar Morton, the No. 2 recruit in the country according to TennisRecruiting.net, had to make a similar decision.
“When I visited in April, I liked it a whole lot; it was like the team was really good, and they were always really nice,” Morton said of her experience. “I liked the coaches a lot. I think they develop players really well, and also I think it’s a really beautiful campus.”
Morton, from Bethesda, Md., graduated high school a year early with a 4.24 GPA. While other students were preparing for life as a senior, Morton was busy on recruiting trips all over the country trying to decide where she would spend the next four years of her life.
Like Anderson, Morton chose UCLA. Unlike Anderson, the 17-year-old Morton is making the adjustment to college without the benefit of a full high school experience.
“It’s good,” Morton said of college. “Some days I’m like, “˜Why am I here?’ like I should be still in high school and go have friends and act like a kid, but I guess I like being in college a lot, and I think I made a good decision.”
Anderson and Morton comprise part of a highly-touted UCLA freshman recruiting class which was ranked third overall in the country according to TennisRecruiting.net. The two freshmen were vaguely familiar with one another from their days on the junior tennis circuit.
Just a few weeks into their freshman year, the two were paired together for their first college tournament as a team.
“It was two, maybe three days before the tournament Stella told us we were partners,” Morton said.
It didn’t take long for Anderson and Morton to find their rhythm as a doubles team. The two freshmen went out and decisively won the 64-team doubles draw of the 2011 USTA/ITA Southwest Regional Championships in San Diego.
“We really didn’t know what to expect from freshmen coming in and playing together,” coach Stella Sampras Webster said of the duo.
“The chemistry that they created together worked really well, and that’s something you really don’t know until you have players play together. It was kind of neat to see them do well and just get better and better, and they ended up winning the whole thing.”
En route to the doubles title, the pair of freshmen knocked off the No. 1 seeded doubles team before claiming victory in the final over the second-seeded doubles team from USC, 8-4, on Oct. 24.
“We didn’t really expect to win the entire thing,” Anderson said of their unprecedented tournament run. “It was definitely a lot of fun playing with Skylar and especially in the finals when we played with USC. It was really intense, and you could feel all the energy from all the people that were watching.”
The win was surprising considering the lack of preparation and playing experience Anderson and Morton had.
“We actually were really good partners, and we work well together,” Morton said of the pairing. “We communicate, and I guess we were both aggressive, and it worked out really well.”
With the win in Regionals, Morton and Anderson earned a place in the prestigious USTA/ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, Nov. 3-6 in New York. The duo will play at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open Grand Slam tournament.
“They’re very excited, very excited to be able to go to New York now together and a great opportunity for them to see and to compete with the rest of the country and see how good they really are,” Sampras Webster said of the freshmen.
Both players figure prominently into the plans for a UCLA women’s tennis team coming off a semi-finals appearance in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
“Robin is probably the best, I would say one of the best freshman in the country, but you wouldn’t know it if you met her because she is a very humble, very nice person,” Sampras Webster said of Anderson.
While they had success at the first tournament, the two freshmen still play with something to prove.
Anderson, who stands at only 5 feet 3 inches, lacks the prototypical size of a tennis player and uses that as her drive to succeed.
Morton, on the other hand, finds her motivation in those who mistake her youth for a lack of experience.
“Being young in college, I guess I have a chip on my shoulder because people think I’m not that experienced, and I want to prove that I am and that I am good enough,” Morton said.