On Saturday, it was all up to senior co-captains Christoffer Konigsfeldt and Riki McLachlan to win the dual match for the Cal men’s tennis team this weekend at the ITA Kick-Offs.
If either of the two seniors lost his singles match, the tournament would go to No. 20 Michigan, and the Bears would have lost their chance at a bid to the prestigious ITA National men’s team Indoor Championships.
Despite both losing the first set, Konigsfeldt and McLachlan fought back to win in three sets each, giving the Bears a come-from-behind 4-3 victory against Michigan.
“To have Chris come back as far down as he was in the second set and for Riki to come back after losing the first set — those were truly Herculean efforts,” said head coach Peter Wright.
Down at one set and trailing 4-1 in the second set, Konigsfeldt fought to make a comeback. He forced the second set into a tiebreaker, where the points went back and forth until Konigsfeldt delivered a drop shot that Vlad Stefan could not return.
On match point during the third set, Stefan sliced the ball too low into the net, giving Konigsfeldt the 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 victory.
With the game locked at 3-3, the results from the court five singles match between Riki McLachlan and Wolverines’ Michael Zhu determined the outcome of the tournament. Although he lost his first set, McLachlan defeated Zhu in the next two sets because Zhu could not return his shots, hitting the ball either too low into the net or outside in the alleys.
With his 3-6, 7-6, 6-4 victory, McLachlan clinched the Bears their bid to the ITA National Indoor Championships for the second year in a row.
Cal’s road to winning the tournament was a long and hard journey.
In the first day of play at the ITA Kick-Off Weekend, Cal (2-0) breezed past Boise State (2-2), 4-1.
Although the team swiftly secured its first victory of the tournament on Friday, Saturday’s match against second-seeded Michigan (2-1) proved to be a much greater challenge for the Bears.
Despite garnering the doubles point, the Bears lost five of the first six sets to open singles play. Gregory Bayane was the only Cal player to win his first set in singles, and he notched the first singles match victory against Shaun Bernstein to make the score 2-0.
After an intense back-and-forth affair on each of the remaining five courts, Michigan won the next three matches, with Cal trailing 3-2. At the top court, Ben McLachlan, who suffered from a locked knee near the middle of the second set, could not come back. Wolverines’ Evan King took advantage of McLachlan’s injury, and McLachlan eventually lost in two sets.
“It was certainly not the way we wanted to come out at singles,” Wright said. “The Michigan team was very strong, and we had to crawl our way back into that match person by person.”
While the less experienced players ultimately lost their battles despite valiant efforts, Konigsfeldt and McLachlan shouldered the extra burden and persevered with victories.
“(The captains) thrive under pressure, and they’ve shown that time and time again,” Wright said. “We had several incredible performances today, and a lot of the high quality tennis came from those two.”
Jessica Lim covers women’s tennis. Contact her at [email protected]