UCLA: Club Tennis
No Excuses: We Love Everyone
February 9-10th, 2008 ----- UCLA Hosts Singles and Doubles Tournament
Sunday's Doubles' Events, by Club Communications Director Adeline Yang
With forty-three pairs of teams from seven universities compacted into UCLA's eight courts at Sycamore, the characteristically balmy California morning dawned upon eighty-six dedicated and perspiring tennis-decked heads. Representatives from UCLA, USC, UCI, UCSD, CSU Fullerton, Loyola Marymount, and UCSB were invited to this traditionally intra-UCLA event, where doubles teams competed independently of school against one another.
Players were placed into one or two draws; men's doubles A and B or mixed A and B. By including a consolation round, the tournament organized by UCLA Coach Anthony Horsley guaranteed everyone at least two matches over the course of the day. The 6-game odd-games rotation prosets commenced early 9 AM morn, and despite some late stragglers' delaying matchplay the finals continued before schedule around 5 PM that evening.
Men's Doubles
Numerous first-round USC vs UCLA men's doubles match-ups initially showed USC to be the stronger as UCLA suffered an overall rough start to the day. However, despite the absence of promising freshmen Competitive Team members John Doty and Luc Bergevin, their battle-veteran team mates perservered in the draw. UCLA men's pairings of John Siefke and Pat Williams, Andre Michelin and Anthony Horsley, Mark Otten and Derek Lowe, as well as Will Lam and Ricky Wu, all continued into the second round of play. They were accompanied by fellow UCLA Club Tennis members Jeff Funston and Dan Cashman, and Andrew Lewis and Kingson Leung.
Bruins Spencer Cohen and Daniel Cheong, Daniel Vu and Chris Oentojo, as well as Alan Fung and Bryan Lau continued their fight in the Consolation Round.
As the tournament progressed, the level of tennis exhibited rocketed up exponentially. Nuclear serves, bombastic forehands, missile volleys all combined into one spectacular feat of on-court warfare as doubles teams struggled in their conquest over one another. In the midst of this sub-scale all-court world-war, Bruins Lam and Wu along with Williams and Siefke dealt out their share of abuse as they climbed up to the semi-finals.
Williams and Siefke soon ran a 5-3 lead against their opponents Ryan Malawy and Spencer Knowlton from UCSD. Malawy, who had finished the previous day's single's matches in the semifinals, was in fine form as he and partner Knowlton began a surprising comeback to defeat the Bruins in the tiebreaker.
The duo from Diego had not yet met the end to their UCLA competition, however. Fresh off a thrilling grenade-flinging first-serve-bashing passing-shot-smashing semi-finals domination against USC's Nathan Huessenstamm and Andrew DeSilva, CT Bruins Wu and Lam gestured confidently to their UCSD competitors and began their finals match almost immediately after.
Wu and Lam's initial strategy of playing loose and enjoying the moment began to falter in effectiveness against the disciplined onslaught by Malawy and Knowlton. Despite a concerted effort, the Bruins succumbed to the Tritons 2-6 in the finals.