UCLA men’s tennis only has four more games left in the regular season to hold its current lead in the Pac-12 standings and stave off rivals USC.
The No. 7 Bruins (14-4, 3-0 Pac-12) prepare to play the unranked Utah Utes (15-7, 1-3) and Arizona Wildcats (9-13, 0-4) on Friday and Sunday. They need to win their matches in order to stay ahead of USC and Stanford, who both have 3-1 records in Pac-12 play.
“I’m excited about (the weekend’s matches). We have quite a bit of momentum going after winning against Stanford,” said coach Billy Martin. “I don’t want to take these teams lightly.”
The Bruins’ No. 2 singles player, junior Martin Redlicki will likely face the Utes’ Dan Little, who has competed at the No. 2 spot for the past couple matches. In his last two matches, Redlicki defeated Oregon’s Simon Stevens 6-1, 7-5 and Stanford’s Sameer Kumar 7-6 (5), 6-4. Redlicki leads the team with 15 singles wins in dual-match play and is on a six-match winning streak, but he said his only concern is getting the Bruins one point closer to victory.
“I’ve got to treat it like every dual match. I’ve got to come into it and play every point,” Redlicki said. “I’ve got to just stay focused on my matches and not worry about anything else.”
One of the captains, junior Austin Rapp, said he struggled with his performance during the fall season and hopes these next two dual matches will spark a hot streak entering championship season.
“I had a pretty tough fall and wasn’t playing my best,” Rapp said. “I knew it was starting to turn around and it’s been pretty good to get some wins and play better. Overall, I feel a lot more confident going to the May part of the season, which we want to do well in and play our best at.”
These two dual matches also offer UCLA’s doubles teams a chance to sharpen their communication even more. The Bruins’ doubles performance has been on the rise of late, especially the duo of Redlicki and freshman Evan Zhu, which has won four consecutive matches.
“We worked with communicating together and of course we’ve never played with each other before this year,” Redlicki said. “I think we started from the beginning pretty well and overall I think we’ve been getting better since. I would say we should just work more on doubles but pretty much keep it the same.”
Arizona comes into the dual match with solid players at courts four and five – Alejandro Reguant and Shoki Kasahara – who have gone for a combined 18-6 in their respective positions.
The Wildcats and the Utes have been struggling recently, with Arizona coming into the match on a four game losing streak and Utah only 1-3 in their last four games. Historically, UCLA has a combined 80-1 record against both schools in program history.