By Cheri Philips
Staff Writer
Don’t mess with Texas. That’s what you used to hear upon entering the Lone Star State.
But not this past weekend. The No. 4 men’s tennis team tornadoed its way through both No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 8 University of Texas at Austin, improving its season record to 16-4 overall. The team jumped seven spots in the national rankings, from No. 11 to No. 4.
The strength of the team that was evident during the weekend will be necessary to close out the regular season successfully in the next few weeks.
In Saturday’s matchup against A&M, Pepperdine halted the Aggies nine-match winning streak by a score of 4-3, causing the Aggies to fall to 14-3. With the doubles point securely notched under the Waves’ belt, each single was as important as they fought against a tightly matched opponent.
No. 3 Calle Hansen was first to step up with a win against Keith From 6-1, 6-1. No. 2 Stefan Suter answered next against Lester Cook 6-3, 6-2. To push the match to a win, No. 1 Al Garland, who is also ranked No. 1 nationally, went to three sets, yet controlled his match by beating Ryan Newport 6-3, 6-7, 6-3.
“With over 600 fans, it was a tough condition to play in,” Garland said. “But it was satisfying and good for the team when we stepped up. In my case, I felt the match could have gone either way and it was a good challenge for me. My approach was I could either fold or pick myself up with confidence. I wasn’t playing like I normally do, but I was able to talk myself through it and pull through.”
Thursday’s match against the Longhorns from Austin was close from the doubles tie-breaker win to the loss of No. 1 singles player Garland from a contested call on matchpoint. It was capped off by the best match of the day, from sophomore Diego Acuna.
In the No. 5 match that propelled Pepperdine to a 4-3 win, Acuna came back after being down 3-0, 15-40 in the third set on the opponent’s serve. According to Acuna’s teammates, this was his best match ever.
“The differences between the two teams were minimal, and that was evident by the scores,” Pepperdine head coach Peter Smith said. “There was plenty of great tennis on display by both teams. Obviously, winning the doubles point was huge and I cannot say enough about the gutty play of our younger players who really stepped it up when the match was on the line.”
Also having a stellar weekend, No. 2 Suter beat Rodrigo Echagaray in two sets, 6-3, 6-4. No. 4 Johan Berg completed the win, downing Michael Domanski 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.
With the victory, the Waves caused Austin to drop to 15-1 serving the Longhorns their first loss of the season.
With the four seniors soon to finish their college careers, this year’s chances of winning at least one of the three competitions in the NCAA tournament are very good.
Pepperdine features the No. 3-ranked player in the nation, Garland, a doubles team with the ability to knock off the top teams in the country in Graeff/Suter and the strength of a near-top 10 team.
“The winner of the tournament will not necessarily be the best, but will definitely be the toughest,” Suter said.
Yet what the Waves first need is to end up in the top 12 so that they will get to host a regional.
“In Texas, it was tough,” Graeff said. “The fact that we beat those two teams will give us good seeding. We still have four matches left, including powerhouses Cal Berkeley and Stanford. If we can pull out at least one of those, it too will give us a good seeding. But we can still improve. If we all come together at the same time we will have a good chance to win.” This year’s National Tournament will be held in College Station, Texas.
Saturday is the last home match of the year against UNLV at 1:30 p.m. Pepperdine will bid adieu to seniors Garland, Graeff, Suter and Steve Racioppi.
“We need to take one match at a time, being mentally and physically prepared,” Garland said. “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”
April 04, 2002