Marcos Giron’s serves answered the call each time after he fell behind 1-4 in his third set. But the junior never broke Yannick Hanfmann’s serve and his final, backhanded return flew into the right alley to send UCLA men’s tennis to its first loss of the year and second straight 3-4 semifinal loss to USC
on Sunday at the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships.
Giron, the nation’s No. 5 player, redeemed a 3-6 first-set loss with a 6-3 second set. The junior went on to reverse any momentum he gained by dropping four or give games to open the third. Trading games with No. 16 Hanfmann proved to be as far as Giron got in a 3-6 finale, the day’s only match to move beyond two sets.
“(Hanfmann) was serving well throughout the match. He made a lot of first serves … he’s a big guy, 6-foot-4 (inches). He can hit a big serve, so it’s tough,” Giron said. “I really believed I was going to come back in the end, but unfortunately, I didn’t.”
UCLA coach Billy Martin recognized that the faster pace of the indoor courts in Houston favored Hanfmann more than Giron, and that the Trojan boasts an “incredible” track record indoors. Despite the slight disadvantage to his own player, Martin saw a few chances for Giron to break Hanfmann’s serve in the first and third sets.
“(Giron) played him very close … he got beat, that happens against good players,” Martin said.
The No. 2 Bruins fell into a 0-3 hole dug by a dropped doubles point and losses on courts three and five by freshman Mackenzie McDonald and senior Dennis Mkrtchian.
UCLA responded quickly. Freshmen Gage Brymer and Joe Di Giulio won on courts four and six to bring the match score to 2-3, and all eyes shifted to Giron on court two after senior Clay Thompson prevailed in a second-set tiebreaker.
Serves played a key role in the another of the day’s upsets, which saw McDonald, the nation’s No. 51 player, fall 2-6, 4-6 to unranked Roberto Quiroz. McDonald expressed a desire to earn more “free” points off of his serve in what he considered to be a tough matchup against a left-handed player. Martin said that while McDonald does not face such competition in practice, shoring up flaws against different opposing styles will be important for the freshman to address.
UCLA’s collective weakness reared its head again in Houston. With this past weekend’s 0-1 deficits to Oklahoma and USC, UCLA has now lost five of its last six doubles points. A squander of a 4-1 lead for the Bruins’ court-three duo of Brymer and redshirt sophomore Karue Sell low-lighted UCLA’s doubles loss to USC.
Brymer and Sell, playing together for the first time, lost five straight games close. Giron and McDonald supplied the point-clinching 3-6 defeat on court one before Thompson and Di Guilio could complete what became a 5-4 non-decision.
While Martin described his team’s doubles play as “lousy” leading into the weekend, he found himself encouraged with this weekend’s showing in both aspects of the game.
“If somebody asked me if we’d still be top four in the country after the indoors, without (injured senior Adrien) Puget, with three freshmen playing in the singles lineup, I don’t know if I would’ve bet a lot, quite honestly,” Martin said.