The top three players on the Cal men’s tennis team will join the ranks of the nation’s best at the NCAA championships this week.
The Bears will send two singles players — juniors Ben McLachlan and Campbell Johnson — and one doubles tandem — the Cal pair of Johnson and senior co-captain Christoffer Konigsfeldt — to compete at the NCAA tournament, which runs from May 22 to 27.
At the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex in Urbana, Ill., McLachlan and Johnson will kick off play on Wednesday in the NCAA singles championship.
Johnson, who usually plays on the third court in singles, will take on Oklahoma’s Guillermo Alcorta at 9:30 a.m. in the round of 64. Both players bring winning streaks into the competition and will look to extend their singles victories to advance to the round of 32.
While Alcorta has notched his last four singles matches, Johnson (28-12) claimed his last two after topping Florida State’s Jordan Kelly-Houston and Denver’s Max Krammer in two sets each in the NCAA team tournament. Johnson recently earned the Pac-12 Newcomer of the Year award in addition to the Pac-12 Doubles Team of the Year award he received with Konigsfeldt.
At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, McLachlan (19-17) will battle Ohio State sophomore Blaz Rola, the No. 12 singles player in the country, for their second meeting this year.
On Feb. 15 at the ITA National Indoor Championships, the two faced off on the top court, where Rola easily took down McLachlan in the first set with a 6-3 win. However, McLachlan suffered a locked knee near the start of the second set and was eventually forced to retire when he was down 4-2 before finishing the set.
The Buckeye sophomore from Slovenia will present McLachlan with a challenge in singles, as Rola has only posted one loss in his 33 matches so far this year.
In the first round of the NCAA doubles tournament on Thursday, Cal’s top doubles duo of Johnson and Konigsfeldt will compete against Auburn’s sixth-ranked pair of Daniel Cochran and Andreas Mies. Johnson and Konigsfeldt, who are one match above a .500 winning percentage, will look to end a three-match losing streak they collected after recently falling in three close losses at the NCAA team tournament.
Last year, Cal was similarly represented by two singles players and one doubles pair. Then-sophomore McLachlan and former senior Nick Andrews both fell in the first round of the singles tournament, taking Cal quickly out of the singles bracket.
The Bears fared better in doubles with their top tandem of Konigsfeldt and Andrews, who were the sixth-ranked pair in the country at the time. They advanced to the round of 16 before falling, 6-3, 6-1, to their No. 18 Texas Tech counterpart.
After the Bears’ recent loss to Virginia — the winners of the NCAA team championships — in the Sweet 16 round, the Cal squad is simply looking to extend its postseason run as long as it can.
“It’s just been an amazing season, so I’m more focused on that — just how much of a wonderful season we’ve had,” said Cal coach Peter Wright after the Virginia match. “We’re excited and just looking forward to the individual tournament.”
Janice Chua covers men’s tennis. Contact her at [email protected].