A riddle named Rosa, last weekend’s victor
Bruno Rosa is an enigma, a coil of riddles ready to be unsprung and unleash his answers to the questions that have riddled and rattled him since he showed up on campus three years ago. If he was a former No. 5 in juniors, why can't he beat these unranked opponents that keep knocking him down Rice's ladder? Is he the emotional leader this team needs? Can he focus, buck his studies, and bear down on the opponents we know, they know and he knows they can beat?
Perhaps. Perhaps, if he keeps playing like he showed at last weekend's Midland Invitational.
With five wins in three days, Rosa sloughed of the comforts of his homestay -- seriously, all competitors stay at the homes of the locals -- to snatch the title away from the University of Texas's Josh Zavala. (The last time the Owls met Zavala he was busy sealing UT's third-straight win over Rice, downing Dennis Polyakov to clinch the Longhorns' 4-3 win.)
After dropping the first set 5-7, Rosa stormed back against the lesser Longhorn to take the last two frames by a score of 6-4 apiece. Rosa reached the finals after trouncing junior Oscar Podlewski -- who is quickly making a case for a top-six spot -- in the semis.
Meanwhile, Dennis Polyakov and Sam Garforth-Bles, the other two Owls who ventured to Midland, bounced after first round losses, though they teamed up to reach the quarters of the doubles swing.
On the whole, it was a relatively impressive showing for the Owls, if you look at the tournament on a results-based scenario. But there's no reason for them to see it this way. With all the talent that Rosa is bounding with, he should be finishing on top of these tournaments. He should be the best player on the squad.
And he just might. Maybe the riddle is finally solved.
Maybe.
Opening tournament doesn’t prove much for men’s tennis
It's not that the men's tennis team didn't want to see wins during last weekend's Rice Fall Invitational. They're competitors. They wanted to win.
But maybe not that badly.
Having only had three official practices, Assistant Coach Efe Ustundag said the results of last week's tournament, the first of the season, was used primarily to assess where the team's skills lay, how the new players stacked up, and how the holes left by Tobias Scheil and Christoph Muller, both of whom exhausted their eligibility last spring -- and both of whom proved to be the team's most capable duo on the doubles court -- will be filled.
Ustundag wasn't terribly disappointed with the team's showing, but, as he is wont to do, the coach prodded his players to give more against the lesser competition.
"The quality of tennis wasn’t necessarily how it was going to be at the regionals, or how it was going to be in the spring. We saw some brilliance in flashes – a great set here, a great set there, and sometimes a really awful set followed by an improved set," Ustundag said. "But I can’t necessarily say, 'This guy really kicked butt throughout his entire match and he really played solid.’ There were some letdown. … It was a little bit of a stop-and-go situation."
The need for consistency is something I'd gather plagues all college tennis teams, but it is a constant theme on the squad, and has been for years. I guess there is some comfort to take from the fact that it appears to still exist.
The newcomers -- Oscar Podlewski, a junior transfer from Elon; Michael Nuesslein; a sophomore transfer from the University of South Florida; and Jonathan Chang, the team's lone new freshman, from Houston's Memorial High -- were all present for the tournament, and while they're play was, like others, rusty, Ustundag thought Chang was the biggest surprise of the weekend, beating Rice senior Dennis Polyakov on the second day of competition.
As it stacks up, the team will be as balanced as it's ever been, with six underclassmen and four upperclassmen. There's no telling where the greatest talent will lie -- obviously, Bruno Rosa will still carry the brunt of expectations, but Sam Garforth-Bles and Isamu Tachibana could be making some noise -- just as there's no telling when the doubles lineups will be finalized.
Fortuantely, the Owls will get another shot at slotting their team at this weekend's Midland Invitational, which will feature the familiar SMU faces, as well as representatives from Oklahom and Texas A&M, among others. Only a handful of Owls will attend (including Rosa and Podlewski), so the talent, it seems, will be stacked.
Of course, it will be difficult to focus on the competition when the team is crashed in the houses of the tournament's hosts. Let's hope those skillet-and-grits breakfasts, coming after a night in a posh guest room, don't distract them.
*Update: Rice took the C (freshman Chang, over transfer Podlewski) and D (Rajam) singles flights, as well as A (Tachibana/Podlewski) and B (Nusslein/Saravia) in doubles. Meanwhile, Tachibana grabbed third and Nusslein took fifth in the A flight, and Podlewski trounced Garforth-Bles for third in B flight.
For some reason, final results were not put up on RiceOwls.com. Still looking for another contributor in the SID, I suppose.
Finally, tennis
With the twisted smashing of Bruno Rosa and the finesse of Christoph Muller, the play of Isamu Tachibana on last year's men's tennis squad went overlooked, early and often. He never earned a spot in the top three of the lineup, never earned any postseason accolades, never whined about it and never caused any controversy.
Which makes him perhaps the most important component of this year's men's tennis squad.
Rosa's up-and-down ascension will be in the light once again -- can he handle the pressure's of No. 1? (yes); can he focus day in and day out against opponents who are clearly inferior? (can't tell yet) -- and Sam Garforth-Bles, who was once in the top 70 last year, will carry his fair amount of questions. But Tachibana's play has been steadier than Shawn Johnson in Beijing. He may not have the ceiling of the other two, but he has the tenacity of the both combined.
Or perhaps tenacity isn't the right word, as his screams during play are less from furor and more from the desire to crack teammates up. When he and fellow sophomore Christian Saravia end up head to head on the practice court, I'm sure Chris Del Conte can hear the two playing all the way in Tudor. Not sure how the coaches feel about it, but it certainly creates a looseness that the team hasn't seen within the last generation of players.
Tachibana led the charge yesterday in the season-opening Rice Open Invitational with a straight-set win over Tulane's Rodrigo Rappaccioli (what a name). Tachibana's win highlighted six Owls victories in singles (with the only loss coming from sophomore walk-on Andy Wang). The two new freshmen, Oscar Podlewski and Jonathan Chang, held their own as well, contributing wins over a pair of Ponies.
All will move on to today's second round, which, unfortuantely, will still be off-campus.