UCLA men’s tennis coach Billy Martin doesn’t want to
make excuses for his team, but sometimes it just seems
necessary.
And after the Bruins’ 4-3 loss to Cal on Friday, which
UCLA followed with an important 4-3 victory over Stanford the
following day, the Bruin coach felt compelled to offer some sort of
explanation.
“We really looked horrible, and it was irritating,”
Martin said. “It wasn’t our day. It probably showed
some mental weakness. We whined more than we should
have.”
Bothered by a couple of rain delays and windy conditions in
Berkeley, the sixth-ranked Bruins (20-3, 5-1 Pac-10) lost four of
six singles matches to suffer the surprising defeat.
It was particularly unexpected because UCLA annihilated Cal 7-0
when the Bears visited Los Angeles back in February.
And while the conditions undoubtedly had a major influence on
the outcome of the match, Martin couldn’t completely excuse
the loss, which snapped a seven-match winning streak for the
Bruins.
“It was a horrible day for tennis on Friday,” he
said.
“It wasn’t pretty tennis. It’s so frustrating
trying to play there, quite honestly. You can’t hit one
normal shot,” he added.
Luben Pampoulov, Kris Kwinta, Chris Lam and Philipp Gruendler
all suffered straight set defeats in singles to seal the
team’s fate.
Benjamin Kohlloeffel and Alberto Francis won their singles
matches for the Bruins.
While a result like Friday’s will lead some to question
the mental toughness of the Bruins, their follow-up performance at
Stanford will serve to allay some of those fears.
In a match where the doubles point ended up determining the
final outcome, UCLA picked a good time to play its best doubles of
the season. Martin singled out the play of Francis and Kwinta, who
defeated the defending NCAA doubles champions, Sam Warburg and KC
Corkery, 8-6 at the No. 1 spot.
“That was by far their best match of the year,”
Martin said.
UCLA dropped all three of its singles matches at the top of the
lineup, but Lam, Francis and Gruendler came through at the No. 4,
No. 5, and No. 6 positions.
Francis has been particularly impressive of late, winning his
last nine singles matches after feeling that he let the team down
against USC.
“Bert did a great job for us,” Martin said. “I
think he’s really kind of coming on at the end of the season
and showing his experience.”
He’ll also end his UCLA career without ever having
suffered a team loss at Stanford, an impressive feat considering
the history of the Cardinal program.
But it must not be thought that the weekend was all good for the
Bruins.
If they can beat USC on Friday, they’ll probably share the
conference title with Washington, whose only conference loss came
at UCLA.
Without the Cal loss, the Bruins could have won the title
outright.
“Friday happened,” Martin said. “We
could’ve done better. It could help us.
“You just sort of chalk that one up to
whatever.”