Squad takes home Pac-10 title

By Gilbert Quiñonez
Daily Bruin Contributor

The Bruins found themselves rooting for the Trojans. Whenever
that happens, the circumstances must be very unusual. They
were.

“Given the circumstances, you’ll root for
anybody,” UCLA men’s tennis head coach Billy Martin
said.

The No. 2 Bruins knew that victories at No. 4 Stanford and No.
19 Cal would allow them to win the Pac-10, probably the toughest
conference in collegiate tennis, with four schools ranked in the
top 20.

On Friday, the Bruins received good news when it was announced
that Stanford’s best singles player, K.J. Hippensteel,
couldn’t play because of an injury.

“We went from being the underdog to being the
favorite,” Martin said.

Even though Hippensteel was gone, the Cardinal still gave the
Bruins a tough battle. Stanford won the doubles point and gave the
Bruins two singles losses, an upset by David Martin over
UCLA’s No. 1 player, Tobias Clemens 6-3, 6-4, and a loss by
Erfan Djahangiri, 0-6, 6-0, 6-0.

However, Marcin Matkowski, Rodrigo Grilli and Lassi Ketola all
won their singles matches, and the contest was tied 3-3.

It all came down to the match at No. 2 singles, where
UCLA’s Jean-Julien Rojer was facing the higher ranked Scott
Lipsky. Rojer won an intense match 7-5, 6-4, avenging a previous
loss to the Cardinal two weeks earlier and giving the Bruins the
match, 4-3.

“We had to play our best to beat them,” Martin said.
“We played pretty darn good singles.”

With the win at Stanford, all the Bruins had to do was win
against the lower ranked Cal to win the Pac-10. Unfortunately, it
wasn’t that easy, as the Bruins lost the match 5-2.

After losing the doubles point, the Golden Bears won five of the
six singles matches. Grilli’s victory over Robert Kowalczyk,
6-1, 6-3, was the lone Bruin win.

“I had plenty of chances, but things just didn’t go
my way,” Kowalczyk said.

After the match, Martin decided to check on Stanford’s
match against USC. A win by USC would still give the Bruins the
Pac-10 title.

Martin heard that USC and Stanford were tied, 3-3, with the last
match going into a third set tiebreaker. A few minutes later, the
match was over. The Trojans had beaten Stanford.

“It didn’t makes us feel that much better, we were
disgusted over our results,” Martin said. “But winning
the Pac-10 is nice. It will help us in the rankings. It made our
day a little bit better.”