COLLEGE STATION, Texas “”mdash; It’s almost impossible to
imagine a storybook ending any better than this one.
With everything seemingly against them ““ the momentum, the
fans and, most importantly, history ““ the members of the UCLA
men’s tennis team did the absolutely unthinkable.
They won.
After 21 long and painful years, the Bruins are finally back
atop the college tennis world after an improbable 4-3 victory over
defending-national champion Baylor in the NCAA Finals Tuesday
night.
“That was just a perfect scenario,” said senior Kris
Kwinta, who clinched the comeback victory for the Bruins after UCLA
had fallen behind 3-1 in the match.
“If you want to write a scenario for a tennis movie, that
would be it. It was just a pure dream come true.”
It was such a dream ending for the Bruins because it looked so
much like it would be yet another nightmare. Winless in their
previous five appearances in the NCAA Championship match, the
seventh-seeded Bruins (27-3) began their sixth attempt in typically
discouraging fashion.
UCLA was blown off the court in doubles, losers on Court 2 and
3, and the feeling was eerily similar to last season, when the
Bruins were destroyed in doubles and went on to lose 4-0 to Baylor
in the national championship match.
But after last season’s disappointment, this UCLA team
vowed that things would be different. The Bruins had hoped all
season to get another shot at No. 1 Baylor (33-1), and after a very
inauspicious beginning, they somehow took back the advantage.
“The whole tournament just went so well,” sophomore
Ben Kohlloeffel said. “We just felt so good after each win.
We felt like we still had something in reserve for that special
moment.”
In the beginning, it didn’t look like that special moment
would ever come.
UCLA won the first set in only two of six singles matches, and
the unabashedly partisan Baylor crowd could smell another
title.
After Kohlloffel earned the Bruins their first point with an
impressive 6-4, 6-2 victory over Benjamin Becker on Court 2,
seniors Luben Pampoulov and Chris Lam went down in straight sets.
That left Baylor only one point away from its second consecutive
championship, an undefeated season and tennis immortality.
That final point never came.
Kwinta and sophomore Philipp Gruendler came back to win their
second sets, and even though senior Alberto Francis dropped his
second set after winning the first, the momentum appeared to be
tipping the Bruins’ way.
“When we were 3-1 down, I just realized that we had such a
realistic chance to win it,” Kohlloeffel said.
After Francis won his sixth match of the tournament in three
sets over Matija Zgaga, and Gruendler came up with a massive 4-6,
6-1, 7-6(4) victory in a third-set tiebreaker to even the match at
3-3, the Bruins truly began to believe.
“It was a Cinderella story,” Gruendler said.
“We were down 3-1 and no one gave us a chance.”
Not against the defending champs. Not after losing the doubles
point. Not in front of a yellow and green crowd that had made the
short two-hour trip from Waco, Texas.
But still, the Bruins never gave up hope.
Right before Gruendler finished his match, Kwinta broke
Baylor’s Lars Poerschke to go up 2-1 in his match, and soon
he had everyone’s attention.
Kwinta relished the spotlight, holding serve from that point on
to secure a heart-pounding 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory and send the
Bruins to the program’s 16th national title, its first since
1984.
“It’s been a lot of disappointing matches where we
thought we were very close,” said UCLA coach Billy Martin,
who becomes the first person to win a national championship as a
player and as a coach. “Hopefully I’ve learned from
those losses and maybe to be a little bit more calm in the heat of
the battle, especially in the finals.”
In the past, Martin has been able to recount in vivid detail
heartbreaking loss after heartbreaking loss. After Tuesday, he will
no longer be haunted by those memories.
“I’m still a little numb,” he said.
But that’s the kind of match it was. With everything
against them, the Bruins found a way to win. It was a storybook
ending to a scintillating playoff run that saw UCLA oust the top
three seeds in the tournament.
“Everything we’ve been working toward just finally
came,” Francis said.
“Hard work pays off.”
“That’s the best way to win it,” he added.
“I’m at a loss for words. It’s
awesome.”