Coming into this weekend’s Cal Nike Invitational, the Cal women’s tennis team was sitting pretty. Four of the top five seeded players were Bears, including the top three – Jana Juricova, Tayler Davis and Annie Goransson. Although this is in part due to the lack of other top teams competing in the event, there were many other players on the squad that dazzled, some unexpectedly.
“You need to be deep,” coach Amanda Augustus said. “You can’t just be top heavy.”
Any discussion of surprises must start with Sofie Susanyi, a freshmen from Hungary, who started the top singles event without a seed and advanced to the semifinals. In her quarterfinal game against Goransson, Susanyi had dozens of remarkable shots, including a forehand winner from the baseline that rocketed past Goransson at the net, just nipping the tramline and leading the crowd at Hellman Tennis Complex to break into applause.
The semifinal match with Tayler Davis cemented Susanyi’s run as valid. Davis has at least three inches on Susanyi, yet the freshmen seemed to have the power advantage early, as she whizzed gorgeous forehands from the baseline that seemed to break the laws of mathematics; Davis looked to have the whole court covered, only see the ball fly past her outstretched racket.
Susanyi was up in the match, 6-1, 2-0, but Davis dug in and outlasted her, as the freshman lacked the same accuracy down the stretch that she had relied on to advance to that round. However, coach Amanda Augustus seemed pleased with Susanyi’s game overall.
“I think I was excited to get to see her on court because I’d been recruiting her,” Augustus said. “She did an unbelievable job considering she’s not feeling great. We’ll be hearing a lot from her.”
The other Cal freshmen, Cecilia Estlander, had a tricky draw and lost in the round of 16 to Hannah James of Arizona State in three sets. Estlander played doubles in the blue flight with senior Stephany Chang, and although they dropped their first game, they came back to win the back-draw.
This tournament kicks off a fall for the team that will decide the final two singles’ spots, presumably after Juricova, Davis, Goransson and Schutting. It is a wide-open competition at this point, as four players (Susanyi, Chang, Estlander, and Duranteau) had great success this weekend and will look to continue that into the fall.
“This is just a starting point — of course I’m happy how we played this weekend but it’s September,” Augustus said. “There’s always stuff to work on, and one of the things I’ll be looking at is how we take this weekend and translate it to next week.”
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