Down 2-1 against Arizona on Friday afternoon, the Oregon men’s tennis team’s hopes for its first Pacific-10 Conference win were rapidly diminishing.
At No. 6 singles, senior Eric Pickard had picked up a 6-2, 7-6 (5) win against the Wildcats’ Alex Labrosse. But freshman Ric Mortera had lost No. 3 singles in straight sets, and the other four Oregon singles players had all lost the first sets of their matches.
Things didn’t look good for the Ducks.
But the momentum shifted as the match wore on, and the four Oregon singles players remaining stormed back to win their second sets.
Oregon’s young team seemed to come of age under the mid-afternoon sun as the lone sophomore and three freshmen each put together three-set comeback wins to give the Ducks a 5-2 victory over the Wildcats and their first Pac-10 win.
Freshmen Alex Cornelissen and Geoff Embry were pushed to their limits in a pair of third-set tiebreaks. Cornelissen defeated the Wildcats’ Bruno Alcala 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(5) and Embry was last off the courts with a 2-6, 7-5, 7-6(3) win over Ravid Hezi.
“It was a good win for us today,” Director of Tennis and men’s coach Nils Schyllander said. “To have two freshmen battle the way that Cornelissen and Embry did today is a tremendous sign for this program.
“They showed a lot of poise and guts in playing their matches the way they did with all the pressure.”
On Sunday, the Ducks started strong against Arizona State, hoping to build off the momentum from Friday’s match.
But despite an emphatic 8-3 win from No. 1 doubles duo Marco Verdasco and Francisco Gallardo and an energetic hour-and-a-half-long losing effort from Mortera and Mike Myrhed , the Ducks couldn’t close out the win.
With only Mortera and Pickard left playing singles, the Ducks were down 3-2 and needed two points to win the match.
Mortera had won the first set 6-4 in his match against the Sun Devils’ Wes Miller. But Miller fought back to win the next two sets and take the match 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.
“He just started swinging more freely and taking better use of his chances,” a disappointed Mortera said. “I could have covered the court better.”
Mortera’s defeat gave the Sun Devils the fourth point they needed to win the dual.
Nearby on the No. 6 singles court, Arizona State freshman Murilo Souza, a lefty with a tricky serve, had forced a third set after edging Oregon’s Pickard 5-7 in the second.
Three hours after they’d started, Souza finally broke Pickard’s serve in the third set and took a 6-5 lead, before serving out the match 4-6, 7-5, 7-5.
“He was doing a lot of kick serves, lefty spins, the ball was bouncing kind of weird and he’d keep the ball up real high, so I was never really able to play my game,” Pickard said. “The shots he was hitting weren’t all that much trouble for me, but I couldn’t hit as many troubling shots to him as I normally would because he wouldn’t keep banging the ball back and forth with me, and that’s what I like.
“With him I had to grind a little bit more and I was pretty upset I lost to him. It shouldn’t have gone three hours. It should have been done at two.”
Women’s Tennis
The Oregon women’s tennis team was stymied in the Arizona desert. The Duck women lost 6-1 to Arizona on Friday and were swept 7-0 by the Sun Devils on Saturday.