At No. 6 in the nation, the Stanford men’s tennis team heads into its most important weekend of the young season with a lot of momentum. This weekend promises to be full of action as two of the Cardinal’s biggest rivals—UCLA and USC—visit the Taube Family Tennis Center. Stanford is coming off two dominant wins against Saint Mary’s and Santa Clara, but No. 9 UCLA and No. 1 USC will surely provide a fierce early-season test for head coach John Whitlinger’s team.
Stanford (4-0) is still awaiting the return of its two-time All-American No. 1 player Bradley Klahn, who is out for the next couple of weeks with an injury, so the Cardinal will be without some of its top firepower against the tough Southern California teams. Klahn’s absence has, however, provided an opening in the lineup for a couple of the team’s new faces: freshmen John Morrissey and Robert Stineman.
The two freshmen have already proved that they are not players to be trifled with, regardless of their age.
“Our freshmen played awesome. You wouldn’t have known it was their first dual matches,” sophomore Jamin Ball remarked after last weekend’s wins. Surely the mental resolve of these rookies will be tested against by far the Cardinal’s toughest opponents of the young season.
On Friday afternoon, the highly contested rivalry between Stanford and USC will resume. Last season, the teams played twice in some of the fiercest matches of the season. USC escaped both times with victories, but during the teams’ second match, the Cardinal had several chances to win before ultimately falling 4-3.
USC is the three-time defending national champion—including last year’s national championship victory on the Farm. This will be the Trojans’ first trip back to Taube since winning the national championship over Virginia.
On the court, USC is led by defending NCAA singles champion Steve Johnson, who played as an amateur on the pro tour in the fall, making him ineligible for the current collegiate rankings. Johnson and Klahn are old rivals and have played several scintillating matches against each other over their college careers, but with Klahn’s injury, the task of neutralizing Johnson will now fall to Cardinal senior Ryan Thacher, ranked No. 46 nationally.
UCLA is 4-0 in the early season and will play Stanford on Saturday at 1 p.m. The Bruins are a perennial top-10 squad and have been worthy rivals of Stanford for several decades. Last year, however, the Cardinal easily handled the Bruins, defeating them 6-1 at Taube.
The Bruins are led by a core of underclassmen that are supplemented by more seasoned players at the lower singles positions. Their top three singles players—No. 72 Clay Thompson, No. 86 Marcus Giron and No. 94 Adrien Puget—are two sophomores and a freshman. Before playing Stanford on Saturday, UCLA will do battle against Cal on Friday.
Historically, whenever these Southern California schools venture up the coast to the Farm, great tennis matches are waged at the Taube Family Tennis Center. This year promises to be no different.