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Freshman Kevin Kaiser defeated Pepperdine’s Omar Altmann in the No. 5 singles spot yesterday (7-6, 7-5). Kaiser’s win tied the score at 3-3, but the underdog Cardinal fell in No. 2 singles (7-6, 6-7, 6-1) and lost the match.
After watching yesterday’s match, one would have never guessed that the Stanford men’s tennis team barely makes the cut for the top 50 teams in the nation. Wednesday afternoon showed a team much stronger than its No. 50 ranking and subpar win-loss record would indicate.
The Card (7-13) fought hard and tested No. 19 Pepperdine, but ultimately fell 4-3 to the Waves. At least Stanford can say it put up a challenge as an underdog.
Defending NCAA champion Pepperdine (14-7) won its first team title at Stanford last May and has followed it up with a successful season in 2007. The Waves’ only losses this season have come to teams in the top 15. Pepperdine has won 10 of its last 11 matches, dropping only a tight 4-3 loss to No. 4 Baylor earlier this month.
Although Stanford won the doubles point in its last four matches, the Cardinal was not able to do that on Wednesday. Sophomores Matt Bruch and Blake Muller picked up an 8-3 win, but the second and third doubles positions dropped their sets 8-5 and 8-4, respectively.
With Pepperdine leading 1-0, Muller decided to even the score and put Stanford on the board. The sophomore blanked his opponent in the first set and led 5-0 in the second before closing out the match 6-0, 6-3 to even the overall count to one apiece.
In only his second singles match following injury, Bruch played a tight match with No. 13 Andrew Begemann, falling 6-4, 6-3. Aware that his opponent was returning to the court after a two-month hiatus, Begemann used that to his advantage. The Waves’ competitor moved Bruch around the court, smartly making use of some drop shots.
Senior Eric McKean was the next match off the court, sticking it to his opponent, 6-4, 6-4. Narrowly dropping a tight first set, senior Dave Ryan fell at the sixth singles spot in straight sets, giving the Waves a 3-2 edge.
At the second singles spot, No. 75 Richard Wire led 5-3 in the first and had the opportunity to serve out the set, but ultimately dropped the set in a tiebreaker. The freshman picked up the second, but No. 80 Bassam Beidas clinched the match for Pepperdine when he picked up the final set.
Mere minutes after Wire finished his match, freshman Kevin Kaiser won his match and closed the gap to 4-3. Despite being down 0-3 in the second, Kaiser came back to pick up a 7-6, 7-5 win.
“[On Wednesday], I told the guys, ‘We’ve had some trouble getting started in singles,’” head coach John Whitlinger said. “We’ve been getting behind very early, by one or two breaks. I told the guys, ‘I don’t want to look at the board and see us down.’ But, boy, the guys came out and played really well, and everybody was even in the first sets.
“We’re disappointed because we thought we could have won the match,” Whitlinger continued. “There are some positives with Eric, Kevin and Blake, and the way they played today, but we still didn’t come up with the victory. We played the defending national champion right to the wire, but we all felt that we could have won.”
Yesterday’s match marked the start of the Stanford Challenge, a run of matches played at the Taube Family Tennis Center. The team next plays host to No. 10 UCLA tomorrow and to No. 8 Southern California on Saturday. The Bruins have only lost three matches this season (all to top-10 teams), and the Trojans’ lone loss this season came to top-ranked Georgia in March.
“I think we all felt at one time that we could win [yesterday’s] match,” Whitlinger said. “And that’s the feeling we need to have when we go in on Friday — that we have potential to win the match. UCLA’s very good, and they’re deserving of the ranking they have and the record they have. There were a lot of positives in [yesterday’s] match, and that’s one of them. It shows our guys that we can compete with these teams, and we could have even won this match.”