Big Slam Preview - Cal at Stanford

The big match of the day on Saturday takes place in Palo Alto as #22 Stanford hosts #18 Cal in the "Big Slam" Part 1. This will be a non-conference matchup with the official conference matchup taking place in Berkeley on April 16. Last season the teams met three times with Stanford taking two of the three by winning at Cal and in Ojai in the Pac-12 semis.

The first meeting in Berkeley was a wild 4-3 win by Stanford that saw Maciek Romanowicz come back from 5-2 down in the third to beat JT Nishimura 7-5 in the deciding match. Cal took the second meeting 4-3 when Billy Griffith held off Nolan Paige 6-4 in the third in the deciding match. Stanford won the rubber match 4-1 at the Pac-12 Tournament in a match that was extremely tight.

Cal is coming off a tremendous pair of wins over #3 TCU and #24 Texas while Stanford is coming off gut wrenching losses to those same two teams.

Saturday Recap: TCU Plows Over Texas, UGA/aTm Win In SEC Semis, Cal Wins The Big Slam + Conference Tournaments

Saturday was another great day of college tennis action with more than 2000 fans filling the stands in Fort Worth for the TCU/Texas match.  TCU hadn't beaten Texas since 1996 but that slump came to an end as TCU got it done 4-1.

TCU started off by taking the doubles point with a 6-1 win at #2 (Trevor Johnson & Cameron Norrie) and 7-6(4) win at #3 (Guillermo Nuñez & Hudson Blake) .  It looked like TCU would take the point a bit easier but Texas's #1 team of Soren Hess-Olesen and Lloyd Glasspool came back from 5-3 down to win 7-6(5) which made the match at #3 the decider.

TCU kept the momentum flowing in singles by taking 4 opening sets and they'd get the 3 singles victories they needed with all 3 coming in straight sets.  Cameron Norrie was off first with a 6-4, 6-0 win at #3 then Arnau Dachs rolled Clement Homs 6-1, 6-3 at #5. Texas's Soren Hess-Olesen would win at #1 singles 6-3, 6-4 to pull Texas to within 3-1 but a short while later TCU senior Will Stein would clinch the historic win with a 6-4, 7-6(8) at #6 singles over Nick Naumann.

Stanford wins the Big Slam, Ohio State makes it 200 straight, Wake toogood, Ivy League no joke + My Sunday Preview

I knew it'd be hard for today's matches to follow up those from Friday but while a few of them came up short in the drama department the one that didn't was the "Big Slam" in Berkeley as Stanford pulled out a classic 4-3 win over rival Cal.  

Cal jumped out to the early lead by taking the doubles point with a 7-5 win at #3 doubles in the clinching match.  Stanford welcomed freshman David Hsu back into the singles lineup at 5 which shifted Nolan Paige to 6 while Cal made a switch at 5 and 6 and moved Greg Bayane up from 6 to 5 and dropped Wikberg from 5 to 6.  After dropping the doubles point the momentum shifted back to Stanford in singles as the Cardinal took 4 opening sets and managed to finish 3 of them off in straights as Tom Fawcett, John Morrissey, and "Rollin" Nolan Paige won at 1, 3, 6 to give Stanford a 3-1 lead.  Cal would answer back with wins from Filip Bergevi and Greg Bayane at 2 and 5 to tie it up at 3.  

All focus was centered on #4 singles where Cal freshman J.T. Nishimura had opened up a 5-2 lead in the 3rd set over Stanford junior Maciek Romanowicz and Nishimura was serving for the match. Nishimura fell behind 15-40 in his service game and after getting it back to the deciding point (40-40), which was also a match point, he would put a shot into the net to give Romanowicz the break. Romanowicz went up 40-15 on his 3-5 service game but then Nishimura hit a two-handed forehand winner to make it 40-30 and followed that up with a backhand winner past a drawn in Romanowicz to bring up the deciding point (40-40).  Nishimura chose the ad-court to receive the serve on what would be his final match point and Romanowicz landed his 1st serve out wide and as the outstretched arm of Nishimura deflected it back in play Romanowicz closed in toward the net and hit a volley into the open court for the hold.  Nishimura would now serve for the match for a 2nd time up 5-4 and he would quickly get broke at love as Romanowicz continued to play aggressively while Nishimura tightened up and had difficulty keeping the ball in play.  Romanowicz would then hold at 40-15 to go up 6-5 and would then race out to an 0-40 lead on the Nishimura serve. After a Romanowicz error made it 15-40 Nishimura wouldn't be able to keep the next one in play and with that Stanford had stunned its rival 4-3.