Men’s tennis will wrap up fall play this weekend as three members of the team head to Flushing, N.Y., to compete in the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships, which begin today.
Having just won a tournament Sunday, sixth-seeded senior Clay Thompson will enter the main singles draw hot. Joining him in singles play will be junior Marcos Giron, who earned a spot as an unseeded wild card and will open play against the tournament’s eighth seed.
“Marcos has been playing really well and I think has got a good chance to do very well in the tournament. Clay has also been doing very well and coming off the tournament last week, I think he’s got a lot of confidence,” said coach Billy Martin. “They’re both in a good situation as far as conditioning-wise and matchups, I don’t think they’ll have any excuses if they don’t have quite the best competition.”
Singles will not be Giron’s only shot at having his best competition as he and freshman Mackenzie McDonald enter the tournament as the third-seeded doubles pair, and the two will try to get UCLA’s first doubles win in the tournament since 1997.
“We’ve only played two tournaments, but we’ve played well together. I definitely think we have every opportunity to win it,” McDonald said. “I’m really hungry to win.”
As one of very few freshmen in the tournament, McDonald said he could either view the tournament as a place where he has nothing to lose – having earned an unlikely spot as a freshman – or as a place where he must defend being a third seed.
Both McDonald and Giron have the mindset that they need to defend.
“I just want to go out there and prove that I’m one of the better players in the nation,” Giron said. “I really think I can go all the way in both singles and doubles.”
According to Martin, this weekend’s tournament is extremely important in terms of players establishing their individual rankings, and those rankings go a long way in earning a spot in the spring’s NCAA individuals tournament. Making it to the quarterfinals, or semifinals, in singles could easily translate to a top-10 national ranking, he said.
“(This tournament) is really important for them,” Martin said. “Clay is really striving to make the NCAA individual tournament and Marcos really wants to establish himself as one of the best, if not the best, collegiate player in the nation.”