ATHENS, Ga. “”mdash; Rarely does the fate of an entire college
tennis match hinge on one singles match.
On Monday, it did.
In a match that started at 1:45 p.m. and didn’t end until
6:15 p.m., UCLA’s Marcin Matkowski battled Vanderbilt’s
Chad Harris to the bitter end.
The match had it all: a dead bird, ups, downs, chants for
America, rain, 8-claps and one very disappointed Bruin. In a word,
it was crazy.
Matkowski, ranked No. 24 in the country, came out firing and won
the first set 7-5. But it wasn’t that easy. Harris, ranked
No. 16, served first and was promptly broken. Matkowski held serve
and went on to break Harris again to go up 3-0.
But the Commodore didn’t surrender. He broke
Matkowski’s serve and held his own serve. Matkowski came up
with another break but couldn’t close out the set.
Before long, the set was 5-5 with Harris serving at deuce. Then,
something very strange happened. A kamikaze bird, probably with
UCLA allegiances, swooped down from the heavens directly into the
path of Harris’ serve.
“I hit that serve pure,” Harris said. “I was
sure it was an ace.”
But the bird had other plans.
“I thought I aced him, and then all I saw was a cloud of
feathers,” Harris said. “It was like “˜The
Natural.'”
Matkowski took advantage of the 10-minute delay that was needed
to wipe up the bird blood; he won the next two points to go up a
break. He served out the set in the next game.
The next set was simply gut-wrenching. A Matkowski win would
mean a Bruin appearance in the finals. A Harris victory would send
the match to a third set, where he would have the assistance of the
pro-Vanderbilt crowd and the momentum.
The way the set began, it seemed certain the match would go to
three. Harris was up a break at 3-0 before the crowd could get
settled. But Matkowski battled and cut it to 3-2.
And then it started to rain.
The match was delayed for approximately 30 minutes, and
Matkowski came out of the trainer’s room an inspired
player.
He bombed four consecutive serves, winning the first game out at
love.
The players stayed on serve to 4-4, and then something amazing
happened. Harris got up 40-0 on his own serve, but Matkowski
battled back to deuce.
He ended up breaking Harris, giving himself the chance to win
the match for his team with his greatest weapon, his powerful
serve.
Utilizing his serve, Matkowski earned himself a double match
point, up 40-15. He double-faulted the first point away and sailed
the second an inch or two over his opponent’s baseline.
Harris capitalized and won the second set in a tiebreak.
“I felt a little deflated (down two match points),”
Harris said, “but I didn’t want to give up hope. I just
wanted to make him play one more shot.”
The intensity seemed to multiply tenfold in the third set.
The vocal Vanderbilt crowd continued its chants of
“U-V” with chants of “U-S-A” and flag
waving occurring intermittently.
The anti-foreign sentiment really irked the Bruins.
“It’s painful,” Tobias Clemens said.
“I wouldn’t want my people to ever get that
personal,” head coach Billy Martin said. “I guess they
wanted to win at all costs.”
And win they did.
With the momentum, Harris quickly got up two breaks at 4-1 in
the third.
The rain started again, allowing Matkowski to collect himself
and give it one last shot.
When he emerged from the delay, the entire Bruin team bonded
together in solidarity, chanting “U-C “¦ L-A” and
doing the 8-clap. Matkowski fought valiantly, getting one break
back, but Harris was just too much in the end. He won the final set
6-4.
“Obviously I’m really disappointed,” Matkowski
said afterward.
“I let the whole team down. They put me in a position to
win the match. I just couldn’t close it out.”