{"id":211566,"date":"2010-01-22T05:16:14","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T10:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanforddaily.com\/cgi-bin\/?p=1037411"},"modified":"2010-01-22T05:16:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T10:16:14","slug":"starting-point-for-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/211566","title":{"rendered":"Starting point for tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Stanford men\u2019s tennis team will play its home opener on Saturday against Sacramento State. The No. 9 Cardinal is brimming with confidence after a promising fall season and a successful Sherwood Cup last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got some competition in against some good players, shook the cobwebs off and stayed healthy,\u201d said head coach John Whitlinger, \u201cso I\u2019m pretty happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sophomore<\/p>\n

Sophomore Bradley Klahn leads the No. 9 Stanford men\u2019s tennis team in its first dual meet against Sacramento State this Saturday. Klahn is coming off a victory in last weekend\u2019s Sherwood Cup, and he and doubles partner sophomore Ryan Thacher are ranked No. 1 in the nation in doubles. (Stanford Daily File Photo)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Cardinal is poised to make it past the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to keep working and keep our sights on the NCAAs in May,\u201d said sophomore Bradley Klahn. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good teams out there, but we feel pretty good about our team.\u201d<\/p>\n

NCAA tennis matches consist of six singles matches and three doubles matches. Each singles match counts for one point and the best two-out-of-three winner of doubles gets a point. The first to four points wins.<\/p>\n

Whitlinger hasn\u2019t announced the lineup for Saturday\u2019s match yet, but it is likely that the singles players will be junior Alex Clayton, Klahn, sophomore Ryan Thacher, senior Richard Wire, freshman Matt Kandath and freshman Denis Lin.<\/p>\n

Clayton has been awarded the No. 37 national singles ranking and Klahn has been slotted at No. 54.<\/p>\n

Klahn is coming off a singles tournament victory at the Sherwood Cup last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge confidence booster to start the season with a win,\u201d Klahn said. \u201cAnd I kept improving with each match. But, I\u2019m still working on my fitness and trying to shore up a few holes in my game.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the singles lineup is relatively set, the doubles pairings are a work in progress. Stanford\u2019s ability to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament could depend on its doubles teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important to get that doubles point,\u201d Whitlinger explained, \u201cso we\u2019ll keep tinkering with the pairing over the course of the year to try and find out which teams work best.\u201d<\/p>\n

One sure thing is that sophomores Klahn and Thacher will be playing doubles together in the top slot. The duo compiled a 12-1 record during the fall season and enters the spring as the No. 1 team in the nation.<\/p>\n

Saturday will be fans\u2019 first opportunity to see the members of the freshman class in action. Kandath, Lin, Sam Ecker and Walker Kehrer make up a group that has been ranked the top recruiting class in the nation by tennisrecruiting.net.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to finally get to play at Taube [Family Tennis Center],\u201d Kandath said. \u201cHopefully we can go out there and get a win against Sacramento State.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sacramento State Hornets have been picked to repeat as Big Sky Conference champions. They return league MVP Kiryl Harbatsiuk and senior Anton Stryhas. As doubles partners, they posted a 15-7 record last spring.<\/p>\n

Stanford looks to start its dual match schedule with a win on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Taube Family Tennis Stadium.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s forecast calls for a chance of rain in the afternoon, but there are no plans to postpone the match at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stanford men\u2019s tennis team will play its home opener on Saturday against Sacramento State. The No. 9 Cardinal is brimming with confidence after a promising fall season and a successful Sherwood Cup last weekend. \u201cWe got some competition in against some good players, shook the cobwebs off and stayed healthy,\u201d said head coach John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2720,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2720"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}