Arrillaga Tennis Center opens with an exciting weekend of Stanford tennis
At the beginning of this month, Stanford men’s and women’s tennis had their opening ceremony to usher in a new era: The Arrillaga Tennis Center. Stanford men’s tennis got 4-3 wins over No. 3 Wake Forest (Friday, April 3rd ) and No. 23 NC State (Sunday, April 5th) while Stanford women’s tennis got a 4-0 win over Virginia Tech (Friday, April 3rd) before losing to No. 9 Virginia 0-4 (Sunday, April 5th).
READ: Stanford freshman Jagger Leach steals the show to open Arrillaga Tennis Center
READ: Stanford freshman Jagger Leach does it again against NC State
BOX SCORES: Stanford Men’s Tennis
BOX SCORES: Stanford Women’s Tennis
It was truly a beautiful weekend of tennis on The Farm. Stanford football general manager Andrew Luck, President Jonathan Levin, and others were in attendance to show their support for both tennis programs. There was a nice ribbon cutting ceremony and words shared about the late John Arrillaga, whose contributions to the entire university have been extraordinary. Stanford men’s head coach Paul Goldstein and women’s head coach Frankie Brennan both addressed the crowd for the ceremony, expressing their heartfelt gratitude to the community and university for the making the project happen.
“Mr. Banerjee said it best, best win in four years, right?” Goldstein said after knocking off Wake Forest. “Samir’s dad. What a special thing for our community and everyone’s still here. It’s just, again, I’m going to go back to what I said at the opening. This is place is a testament to the commitment that Stanford University has to pursuing excellence in academics and athletics. Not just in football, not just in basketball, in Olympic sports. It’s a special place. I’m privileged to be a part of it. I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
“Well, it’s electric I mean, we’re thrilled, obviously, to be here,” Brennan said. “We feel so fortunate. It’s been a long wait to get to this moment in time and the reward is you can’t just even imagine it. The locker room, the facilities, but especially this feel here. This is what we thought this was going to be like and I think it’s going to get even bigger as we have more matches. This is what we wanted. We wanted this outside area. We wanted to go and have the fans have a real true experience and I think we felt that today in the energy we had.”
After the men’s victory over Wake Forest, Goldstein paid tribute to John Arrillaga Jr. and Levin for their roles in making this project happen. For it to come after a thrilling match won by Jagger Leach made the moment all the more memorable.
As for the facility itself, I have to say, it really is amazing. It’s one of the nicest athletic facilities on campus, showing a commitment that Stanford has to ensuring that their tennis programs remain elite. The team meeting rooms, the whole bit is first cabin. Just a really neat thing for the players and coaches to experience and have access to.
As for the tennis that was played, it was obviously a better weekend for the men’s team. They had to dig deep to win both of those matches and Jagger Leach was a major reason for that. For him to have the 4-3 clinching victory on both days, especially the way he did it, is mighty impressive. He’s proving himself to be one of the top freshmen in the country and rightfully picked up ACC Freshman of the Week honors.
“It’s exciting, it’s exciting,” Goldstein said after beating NC State. “We talked about it on Friday after the match, certainly, actually more so yesterday. Friday, we were just so giddy, but Saturday, you know the day in between, we talked a lot about how hard it would be to get back up for a match after the high of Friday night and so I think we, you know, we had some awareness around and some self-awareness, but what I think I just told the guys is, until you experience it, it’s really, it’s hard to fathom and I think it was hard for us to get back up again after the excitement of Friday night, opening the stadium and that kind of excitement. But I was really proud of the way our boys battled and we got, you know, Nico’s not, Nico’s feeling sick and battling the flu and still going out there.
“Boy, Alex Razeghi was pretty awesome today. Oh my gosh. One game against a quality opponent like that? And then I’m super proud and happy for Hudson because that’s a guy he lost to last year. Badly. I think like 0 and 2. So for him to come back and win like that, so important. Such an important win for us. And we put Krup in a tough spot. He doesn’t know that he’s gonna have to play and Samir can’t go after doubles. And so he went out there and battled.
“But you know, reminded me, I just told the team, might have been pre-Zach days, we had SC UCLA on back to back days and Tim Sah won back-to-back clinchers on back-to-back days. I don’t know if you were here then, 4-3 both days, last match on SC-UCLA and Jagger just reminded us all a lot of that. Being the last game on, two matches in a row, it’s a lot. It’s a lot, but you go through those experiences and it gives you confidence getting through one, gives you confidence for the next one.
“So we need to, yeah, we just gotta try to regroup and recover. Excited we only have one match next week instead of two. Gives us an extra day to recover and you know, all about recovery. Get ourselves ready to go across the bay next weekend.”
The women’s team had a more up and down weekend. The win over Virginia Tech was nice as it was on opening day of the new stadium. The team really wanted to come out and get a win to open this new era and they did that.
“Yeha, you know, I think the big thing was everyone was a little bit nervous because you want to perform well,” Brennan said. “You get once chance to open up a stadium and so I think for them I think it was really exciting that they’re the team, they’re the group that’s opening up the stadium. So for them, there were some nerves. There were some things they had to get over and I thought we did a great job of that, to get the doubles point, and then just get going in singles and you know, everybody who was sort of struggling with the nerves, overcame them and we saw our best tennis at the end of the way.”
The freshmen Alyssa Ahn, Tianmei Wang, and Monika Ekstrand all had strong performances, showing why the future is so bright for them in the coming seasons.
“Well, I mean, it just goes to show their growth and what they’re doing and of course, you gotta include Monika with my three freshmen starting,” Brennan said. “It’s very rare that you have that and they’re stepping up and they’re growing every day and again, to handle this situation is really big for them. This is gonna be their home now for the years to come, so I think it’s really exciting for them.
“I’m super proud of their growth and I’ll tell you this, especially with Tianmei. I want to give her a special shout out because her doubles is really improving and her playing with Monika, we just made the switch two matches ago, is really outstanding to watch them play together. I think we’re building on something there. So I’m very excited to have them around and what they’re doing. They’re growing every day, like I said.”
On the doubles switch with Wang and Ekstrand playing together, Brennan went a bit deeper on why he felt that move was necessary.
“You know, there’s a reason to switch,” Brennan said. “Sometimes you think it’s gonna be better teams, other times it will engage them more because now I’ve got to communicate more, I’ve got to talk to you more. I don’t know how you as well, how you play, how do we communicate on the court? So I think that helps us to get more locked in. I think we were getting a little complacent with our teammates and there was enough growth. So anything can happen. We could switch back, we could stay here, I don’t know what’s gonna happen going forward. But for this weekend, we’ll keep these teams going, but it certainly has, I think, has a little bit of a spark for us right now, especially at the 1 and 2. We didn’t switch 3, but the 1 and 2 for sure, there’s a little more spark there right now that I’m seeing.”
Getting that doubles point is always huge for teams and so for them to get that against Virginia Tech really helped them settle in for the rest of the afternoon.
“I did, I definitely did,” Brennan said of noticing that relaxing his team. “But then I could see where there were some nerves when they got on their own courts. But the good news is, with the singles that’s the marathon. The spring is the doubles. The marathon is the singles. You have plenty of time to make adjustments, get your mind right. So I definitely saw them relax and what I saw them is they weren’t celebrating it too early. They weren’t super excited that they won the doubles point. They knew there was still work to do and they were locked in.”
On Sunday, they got a bit of a wakeup call against Virginia. Virginia is a really good team, so they knew what they were in for.
“Well obviously, I’m super excited for my seniors and to have their senior day and that time for them,” Brenan said after the Virginia match. “This is a tough team. I mean, because we play senior day at the end of the year against whoever that’s scheduled, you know, it makes it challenging. This is a very talented team we played. Again, we got some work to do in the doubles for sure. But I am proud that we hung around and gave ourselves a chance to fought hard in the singles. And you know, again, it’s a just couple of games here that will turn things for us. So, we got two more regular season matches left. Cal on Tuesday there and then we fly off and head to SMU on Sunday. And just gotta claim one of those to keep our heads up.”
Without Alexis Blockhina and Valerie Glozman, Stanford has not had the lineup they were hoping to have. They are having to learn how to play without them, which will hopefully yield some dividends for next season and later on this this season.
“It’s like, you don’t want to make the injuries an excuse and you don’t want to also make it feel like we’re not talented enough because of those injuries,” Brennan said. “But then there’s also the reality of it all. So for me it’s like can we just keep getting a little bit better. One percent better, two percent better, things like that. Can we find a way to loosen up in the doubles and just make some bolder moves and understand that failure is okay? Stanford students don’t like to fail. So tennis it’s pretty obvious when you fail. If you get passed down the line because you moved too early or get lobbed or things like that, or get aced, that makes you feel like you failed. And I think they have to be willing to move, be more explosive, and be willing to fail. And it’s okay to fail. I understand in the classroom it’s not, but in athletics and on the tennis court, you actually have to fail to succeed.”
Perhaps as an early sign of those dividends, the women’s team did however pick up a huge win at No. 23 Cal on Tuesday, April 7th. 4-0 with Monika Ekstrand, Tianmei Wang, and Sein Myoung winning their singles matches after the team got the doubles point.
“Just outstanding,” Brennan said of Wang. “I mean, again, the three freshmen are doing a great job this year. They’re not always locked in at the same time but look at Alyssa also. Tianmei is a really special player. I tell her this all the time, she has to keep believing in it because I think she’s really good at doubles as well. And she’s very tough on herself, so she’s not kind of used right now, sometimes to my positive coaching and how I’m always patting her on the back. I think she almost wants to hear something a little more, like, negative or not, you know, I gotta do more of this, but it’s like, no, believe in yourself. You are doing things right, so she’s bringing a lot to the table and honestly, she, you know, it’s hard to figure out where she should be in this lineup.
“Right now, I think we are where we should be right now, but I mean, I could see Tianmei doing damage throughout her career. She is going to be very good throughout her career. She is a good, good college tennis player with great energy. So I see the sky is the limit for her going forward.”
Brennan felt after the Virginia Tech win that their signature win was coming. While Virginia didn’t go the way they wanted, that Cal win was certainly the kind of win that Brennan was hoping was going to come for his team. It just came a couple days later.
“This is not basketball, we do not need to score 80 points if they score 79,” Brennan said. “We need to get four points and there are four points on these courts for my team. So I’m excited, the opportunity for it. We’re looking for that signature win. It’s coming. It’s out there. It’s coming.”
Unfortunately, they were not able to win their regular season finale at SMU on Sunday, April 12th as the Mustangs won 4-1. They’ll get another shot at them in the third round of the ACC Championships on Thursday after defeating Virginia Tech 4-2 in the second round.
As for the men’s team, they wrapped up regular season competition on Sunday, April 12th at No. 44 Cal and got a 4-2 win over the Bears. They will face either NC State or Florida State in their opening match of the ACC Championships on Friday.
Overall, this was a great weekend of tennis for Stanford to open the new Arrillaga Tennis Center. It was a celebration of the program, the university, and its commitment to the Olympic sports. It’ll be fun to see what big moments the program will have in their new home in the coming seasons.
“Thank you to John and Laura Arrillaga for making this possible,” Goldstein said. “It doesn’t happen without them. This doesn’t, this event, this doesn’t happen without them.”
“It means everything,” Leach added. “And like, I’m so grateful from the generosity from the Arrillagas to you know, make this dream a reality and to build us this incredible facility. It is so amazing to be part of and it means everything and I hope I can win a lot more big matches for this team in this stadium.”
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