The Stanford men’s tennis team cruised through its two matches this weekend, looking every bit like the nation’s No. 6 team. A hallmark of good teams is that they handily take care of lesser opponents, and that is exactly what the Cardinal (4-0) did this weekend against No. 64 Saint Mary’s and No. 50 Santa Clara.
Neither of the matches was ever close or in doubt, leading to the simple statement by Santa Clara head coach Derek Mills, “We played hard today but lost to a better team.”
Friday’s match, the first round of the qualifying tournament for the National Team Indoor Championships against the Gaels, started with the quick acquisition of the doubles point for the Cardinal as the teams of Ryan Thacher/John Morrissey and Matt Kandath/Robert Stineman took care of their opponents in a speedy fashion. Stanford also started strongly in the singles matches, led again by Thacher—a senior who is filling in admirably for his injured two-time all-American teammate, Bradley Klahn. Thacher trounced his opponent 6-1, 6-0, and from that point, the rout was on.
Stanford’s only dropped point in the contest came on court three, where junior Denis Lin was outplayed in three sets by Saint Mary’s Sherif Hamdy. The other Cardinal singles winners were Kandath, sophomore Jamin Ball and the potent freshman duo of Morrissey and Stineman, who both won for the combined fifth time in six dual matches. In the end, Stanford came away with a 6-1 win.
Saturday’s second round of the ITA Kick-Off Weekend pitted the Cardinal against the Santa Clara Broncos, who knocked off the Boise State Broncos in their matchup on Friday afternoon. A ticket to February’s National Team Indoor Championships awaited the winner of the match.
As in Friday’s match, Stanford started off strong, rushing out to a similar demolition by the duos of Thacher/Morrissey and Kandath/Stineman. Staked to this 1-0 lead, the Cardinal had to work a bit harder in its singles matches to secure the victory.
Thacher cruised past his opponent again, winning 6-3, 6-0, and Lin, exacting some revenge for his loss on Friday, won in straight sets as well, putting Stanford on the brink of victory with a 3-0 lead. The remaining four matches had all split the first two sets, so all were forced to play a decisive third set, a rarity in college tennis.
Stanford proved its superior endurance by winning three of the four three-set matches and securing the same lopsided margin of victory—6-1—as it had on Friday.
“We played tough and didn’t let ourselves get satisfied with our wins from last weekend,” Ball said. “Santa Clara gave us a tough challenge but our guys were prepared, both physically and mentally.”
This weekend’s wins will add to the momentum that the Cardinal achieved on last weekend’s road trip to Oklahoma, where the team defeated the highly regarded North Carolina Tar Heels and Tulsa Hurricanes—both ranked in the top 25.
This momentum, along with the depth of a Stanford team that is competing without its best player in Klahn, will surely be tested when the Cardinal next takes to the court in next weekend’s highly anticipated home matches against Stanford’s perennial Pac-12 rivals from Southern California: USC on Friday and UCLA on Saturday.