Tennis puts on a good show despite injuries
Freshman Maxime Tabatroung celebrates after his win over Stanford’s Denis Lin, but No. 9 UCLA could not pull through Saturday, falling 4-3 to the No. 7 Cardinal.
By Brantley Watson
April 4, 2010 9:58 p.m.
To say that back-to-back victories for the UCLA men’s tennis team over the weekend would have been monumental may be a bit of an overstatement.
But if the No. 9 Bruins could have pulled it off, considering two of their top players were sidelined due to injury, they sure would have sent a statement to the rest of the Pac-10, and the nation.
UCLA (12-5, 3-1 Pac-10) came up a point short of defeating No. 7 Stanford (12-5, 2-1 Pac-10) Saturday afternoon, suffering a nail-biting 4-3 loss to the Cardinal. On Friday, the Bruins captured an impressive 5-2 victory over No. 17 Golden Bears (10-6, 1-2).
Although redshirt senior Haythem Abid, who plays at the No. 1 singles position for the Bruins, did compete in doubles against Cal, he, along with junior Holden Seguso who has played mainly No. 2 singles for UCLA, were both forced out of singles over the weekend, and neither competed against Stanford. And coming into the Stanford match, UCLA coach Billy Martin was not sure exactly how his squad would react to having both Abid and Seguso out of the lineup.
“I really didn’t give us a lot of a chance to win this match in the beginning of the day having to keep both (Haythem) Abid and Holden (Seguso) out,” Martin said. “But the guys really fought their hearts out and I really feel good about it. If you can feel good about a loss, I feel pretty good about this one.”
Abid is battling a left wrist injury that has plagued him for the better part of the past three seasons, while Seguso was donning a walking boot on his right foot.
“I think doubles-wise, it really hurt us … but singles-wise, we were able to hold our own,” Martin said. “I think we’re definitely a better team with them, but some of the guys have really stepped up.
“We’ve got eight quality players on our team and you need seven or eight guys because there are always injuries. You just hope they don’t come around a big match like this.”
UCLA’s second victory on the season over the Golden Bears was highlighted by a dominant performance on court No. 1 from junior Nick Meister, who defeated the No. 16 player in the country, Cal’s Pedro Zerbini, 6-1, 6-0. UCLA came into Saturday’s showdown with the Cardinal with a substantial amount of momentum, while Stanford was reeling from a loss to No. 4 USC just a day before.
Stanford turned the momentum around, quickly capturing the doubles point and winning the first singles match on court one. Meister was not able to repeat his performance from Friday, losing 3-6, 3-6, to No. 5 Bradley Klahn.
However, from that point forward, the match was back and forth, coming down to the third set on court No. 2. But despite having two match points, UCLA junior Amit Inbar was unable to close the match out for the Bruins, dropping a 4-6, 6-2, 5-7 decision to Stanford’s Alex Clayton.
