If being in sync makes for good doubles play, then Francisco “Paco” Gallardo and Marco “Macho” Verdasco have all the makings of the perfect doubles team.
The two live together, take classes together (they’re both first-year business majors), enjoy the same movies, go shopping together, and are so in tune with their inner metrosexuals that they make it a point to pick out matching outfits before every match.
“I like to wear good clothes,” grinned Verdasco – whose uber-manly team nickname, ‘Macho,’ offsets his seemingly unmanly addiction for shopping. “For example if I’m wearing green shoes, I like it to match with my clothes.
“Before matches Paco and I always talk about the outfit. We like to match.”
As a result, the leading Latino duo on the Oregon men’s tennis team always manages to look dashingly intimidating when they take to the doubles court.
Last Sunday in the Ducks’ close 5-2 defeat to Arizona State, ‘Paco’ and ‘Macho’ won their No. 1 doubles match decked out in identical black outfits with Rafael Nadal-style black headbands holding back their curly, dark locks.
Against Stanford the week before, they succumbed 8-5 to the Cardinal’s eighth-ranked doubles team in the nation, but once again did so in style – this time in white, yellow-trimmed shirts and green Oregon baseball caps.
With their big groundstrokes and flashy power serves, Spanish sensation Verdasco, and Gallardo, his Mexican-born but Barcelona-educated doubles partner, play the same kind of game and bring a stylish Spanish flair to everything they do.
As a result, Spanish has become the lingua franca of the Oregon men’s tennis team and the guys greet each other with ‘hola’ and yell ‘vamos’ during matches.
To hear Director of Tennis Nils Schyllander tell it, Verdasco and Gallardo are the next big things on the Oregon tennis landscape.
“I see nothing but great things for these guys,” Schyllander said. “They have big games and they’re starting to learn to play doubles. They’re just learning how to move on the doubles court, to cover the right angles and impose themselves a little more on their opponents.
“It’s just a matter of them getting some experience, because where they’re from, you don’t play much doubles. Doubles is mostly a North America thing.”
It’s all in their heads
But Gallardo and Verdasco also have the same kind of problem: Both men tend to lose control of matches more as a result of self-erected mental roadblocks, than from actual physical inferiority.
“Marco gets a little frustrated sometimes,” Schyllander said. “He’s in every match right now, he’s just losing some serves at some key situations. And when that happens, it’s a matter of re-setting mentally and not letting that get to you, and just doing whatever it takes to break back.”
The problem, as Verdasco readily admits, is that he’s easily rattled when things aren’t going his way.
In his 6-2, 6-1 defeat to the Sun Devils’ Juan Rebaza last weekend, it quickly became apparent that Verdasco was digging himself into a deeper hole every time he tried to set up a winning shot.
The big Spaniard would start off points by pumping out a huge serve and opening up the court as Rebaza flailed to return. But then, with Rebaza out of position and the court wide open, Verdasco would overplay the potential winning shot and either smack the ball into the net tape or send it whizzing past the sideline he was aiming for and right into the doubles alley.
Reining in his primal tendency to just belt the ball over the net as hard as he can is something that Verdasco has struggled with for as long as he’s played tennis.
“It’s a mental thing. That’s one of the things that’s been my problem my whole life,” Verdasco said. ” My coaches all my life have told me, ‘You have to play your game, you have to focus. Don’t go for the incredible forehand and miss by that much. It doesn’t matter. Go for the normal forehand and make it by that much and get the point.’”
Poota!
When Verdasco starts missing shots, he gets frustrated, and that leads to another problem – swearing.
“Here, you really have to calm down when you’re playing a match,” Verdasco said. “Because if you say one thing, it’s a point penalty. That’s one thing I have to get used to. In Spain, I get angry on the court and I yell, ‘poota!’ like that.”
As Verdasco found out, yelling the Spanish equivalent of the word ‘bitch’ in the middle of a match is unacceptable in college tennis.
“I was playing this guy from UCLA. When we were 2-2, 30-0 to me, I missed a couple of balls and then I yelled, ‘Poota, Marco!’ And the ref is like, ‘Point penalty, game to UCLA,’” Verdasco said. “It was the first break of the match. And I got so angry.”
Since that incident, Schyllander has provided some added incentive to ensure that Verdasco holds his tongue – and holds on to his racket – when he gets mad: He’s told Verdasco that another instance of on-court swearing or racket-throwing will result in the Ducks’ No. 1 singles player’s omission from the lineup for the next match.
Contrite, the normally amiable Verdasco says he’s learning to contain his temper on the court.
“In Spain, you say that and nothing happens. Now, I have to get used to that. And I’m getting used to it. Against Arizona State, I lost that match and it was a really bad match. And I didn’t say anything the whole match,” he said, beaming proudly.
Gallardo is less ready with the “pootas,” but he’s fighting his own demons. He started the year as a regular feature in Oregon’s singles lineup, playing No. 2 singles in the Ducks’ season opener against Linfield, and rotating between No. 3 and No. 4 for their next few matches.
But he’s since slid to No. 6 in the lineup, and after a six-match losing skid, was left out of the singles roster entirely last weekend.
“I think it’s mental for me, and it affects everything,” Gallardo said. “In doubles, I’m playing much better now than I was at the beginning of the year because Marco and I know each other much better now.
“In singles, when I play relaxed I’m okay, but when I miss and start thinking or get in a bad mood, I get problems. I’m just thinking too much.”
“Paco’s got one of the biggest games on the whole team,” Schyllander said. “But you’ve got to play confidently, before you start to make too many mistakes. And as soon as he gets trust back in shots, he’ll blow anyone off the court.”
Regardless of their woes on the singles court, Verdasco and Gallardo are steadily becoming a top-notch doubles team.
Schyllander says they’re progressing more quickly than he expected, especially in light of how he had to practically teach Verdasco the doubles game from scratch.
“We don’t have a tradition of doubles in Spain,” said Verdasco, who explains that at Spanish national tournaments, the good players almost never stick around to play the doubles event after they get done with their singles matches.
“When I came here, Nils told me, ‘You have a good return, a good serve and good volley. We’re going to teach you to play doubles,” Verdasco said. “At first we had no idea what to do on the court. We’d be playing guys that we were much better than, but they’d be beating us, and we were like, ‘What’s happening?’
“But we finally started to play good doubles two months ago. We talk on the court, we can switch sides now and we can cover the court better.”
When they’re playing together, Gallardo makes it a point to try and help Verdasco rein in his quick temper.
“Sometimes when he misses the ball, he starts thinking a lot and getting negative, and I tell him jokes or something like that, so when he laughs, it’s okay,” Gallardo said.
The Ducks take on the Huskies in their final match of the regular season on Saturday at 1 p.m. [email protected]
Dynamic Duo
Daily Emerald
April 17, 2007
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