(Photo: Marie Obsuna/Sun Devil Athletics)
In its first season back in action since 2008, the Arizona State men’s tennis team secured a berth as one of the 64 teams to clinch a spot in the 2018 Division I Men’s Tennis Championships.
No. 36 ASU (14-10 overall, 3-4 Pac-12) will take on No. 18 Baylor (20-9 overall, 1-4 Big-12) in the first round of the tournament. The squads have a 1-1 all-time record in dual match play against each other, with the Sun Devils coming out on top 4-3 in the last contest at Baylor in 1997.
The match will be played on a neutral court hosted by Texas A&M in College Station, Texas.
For a program resurfacing after a 10-year absence, it was to be expected that there would be a few bumps in the road. ASU head coach Matt Hill defied that stigma, and assembled the No. 5 recruiting class in the nation, according to the Tennis Recruiting Network.
Although the team started off slowly with three straight losses to the begin the season against three Oracle/ITA Top-25 opponents, things picked up quickly, and the Sun Devils finished with a record north of .500.
There was never any real doubt or concern that this team would be fighting for contention into the NCAA Tournament, with Sun Devils’ ranking never falling lower than their current mark of No. 36. They were ranked as high as No. 13 in the Feb. 27 Oracle/ITA rankings after clinching the championship hardware at the 70th annual Blue Gray Tennis Classic over Alabama by a final score of 4-3.
A lot of this team’s success this season can be attributed to their lone senior, captain Michaël Geerts. He is the only Sun Devil to qualify for the individual NCAA Men’s Singles Championships which will take place following the team tournament at Wake Forest University.
No. 20 Geerts is the highest ranked Sun Devil in program history since Sargis Sargsian was atop the nation with the No. 1 overall singles ranking in 1995. Sargsian won the NCAA Singles title to clinch the year-end ranking of one in college tennis. Geerts had an individual record of 25 wins and 12 losses and was just one of three players in the nation to notch two wins over top-5 opponents, with wins over No. 1 Martin Redlicki of UCLA and No. 2 Mikael Torpegaard of Ohio State–both of whom were All-Americans this season.
No. 80 freshman captain Benjamin Hannestad also left a notable mark this year going 19-10 in head-to-head singles matches. He was the only other Sun Devil ranked in the latest rendition of the Oracle/ITA singles rankings as of May 3.
Hill tinkered with the doubles pairings often this year trying to see which players displayed poise and chemistry as a duo on the court. It is hard to take a group of individualized, European-style tennis players and throw them into the Americanized collegiate tennis system and expect them to balance their playing styles right away.
However, the Sun Devils have two pairings ranked in the national doubles rankings to end the season as sophomore Makey Rakotomalala and freshman Andrea Bolla were slotted at No. 59 while Geerts and freshman Tim Ruehl landed at No. 68.
For a team searching to find its identity in its first season since being discontinued as a varsity sport, the Sun Devils’ rampant success and ability to clinch a spot in the NCAA tournament poises this ASU program to be a force in the seasons to come. In a conference as tough for college as any in the Pac-12, the Sun Devils will have to build upon this first season back and the experience this postseason brings as they look to expand into a future national powerhouse.
The match against Baylor is scheduled for Friday, May 11, with first serve at 8 a.m. MST. Notably, ASU assistant coach Michal Kokta is a Baylor graduate, having played for the Bears from 2004-07.
