The Stanford men’s tennis team suffered its first losses of the young dual-match season this past weekend as Stanford was clobbered by visiting No. 1 USC and No. 9 UCLA. The two losses — 7-0 against USC on Friday and 6-1 against UCLA on Saturday — were Stanford’s most lopsided defeats over the past two years.
Luckily for the No. 6 Cardinal (4-2, 0-0 Pac-12), however, these matches will not count towards Pac-12 standings; the conference matches will take place in mid-April at the Southern California homes of the two rival schools.
The match against USC started out badly — and then went from bad to worse. The Trojans, three-time defending national champions, locked up the initial doubles point with ease, winning eight games to two on courts one and three. The No. 1-ranked Trojans then summarily dismantled their Cardinal opponent, winning the four singles matches in straight sets and clinching the contest before the Cardinal could even take a single set off them.
The single bright spot for Stanford was the final — and most exciting — match of the day: a firepower-filled showdown between USC’s Steve Johnson and Stanford’s Ryan Thacher on the No. 1 court. Johnson, the No. 1 ranked player in the country, is the defending NCAA singles champion and a main rival of Stanford senior (and fellow NCAA singles champion) Bradley Klahn, the man Thacher was filling in for on the No. 1 court. Thacher, a bona fide top player in his own right, battled tooth and nail in a fierce and serve-dominated match against Johnson before ultimately falling in a third-set tiebreaker.
Saturday afternoon’s match against UCLA proved just as disappointing as Friday’s. Stanford actually got off to a fine start in this one, winning the doubles point behind strong play from Thacher and freshman John Morrissey. But, just like the day before, the singles play was just not quite good enough as the Cardinal was defeated in all six matches.
The match was closer than the lopsided score would suggest, as four of the six singles matches went the distance to three sets, but the Cardinal consistently could not come up big on the most crucial points.
The season is still very young — and Stanford is playing without its best player in Klahn — but there is surely little doubt that these two losses hurt for head coach John Whitlinger’s squad. The Trojans and Bruins will be two of the teams that Stanford will have to get through in April’s Pac-12 Championships and then in May’s NCAA Championships if the Cardinal is to realize its annual goals of winning the conference and national titles.
Though the losses hurt, the Cardinal players refuse to let it get them down.
“We’re not going to dwell on the losses but try and move forward from them,” said sophomore Jamin Ball. “If anything, we were exposed to some of the best competition in the country and realized where we need to get to in order to compete at the highest level.”
The Cardinal will have ample opportunity to prove its resilience and resolve immediately as the team has a match on Tuesday against unranked Hawaii and another on Saturday against No. 36 BYU.