Thursday, 5/15/97
The un-civil war
RIVALRY: Stanford and UCLA have fought for NCAA crowns, Pac-10
titles and state pride. The stage is set for another championship
battle.
By Mark Shapiro
Daily Bruin Staff
Rare is the situation that the great rivalries in sports fail to
please.
Ali vs. Frazier was never boring, the Dodgers vs. the Yankees in
the World Series never lacked thrills and the Lakers vs. the
Celtics never left fans anything but out of breath.
It is rivalries like these that make sports so nerve-wracking
and exhilarating, and now another one can be added to the list.
The epic matchups between UCLA and Stanford on the rough
surfaces of a tennis court have taken their place among the
pantheon of great and wondrous rivalries.
"We feel we’re two of the best teams and we have a mutual great
respect … it’s a great rivalry," UCLA head coach Billy Martin
said. "If you like competition, where you put everything on the
line and still lose, that’s what can happen against Stanford."
The rivalry is just as intense up north.
"It’s been at the highest level, the most intense competition
year in and year out between two of the best teams in the country,"
Stanford head coach Dick Gould said.
This one stretches back to the early days of men’s tennis, but
over the last 30 years it has come to dominate the collegiate
tennis scene, as the two teams have maintained their play at the
highest level, flip-flopping over the nation’s good graces.
You want parity? How about UCLA leading the overall series by
only eight matches, 43-35?
You want intensity? How about overflowing stands, unruly crowds
and tension that would give Fonzi a heart attack, as a match
between two perennially top-five teams comes down to the wire.
You want significance? In the last three years, the two teams
have met three times in the NCAA tournament, twice in the
semifinals and once in the final.
Right from the early days the tension was there, and 20-some
years ago, the rivalry hit its stride, when Gould and former UCLA
coaching great Glenn Bassett were hired a month apart. From the
early 1970s, across national titles and No. 1 rankings, the
cornerstone for Gould, Martin and his predecessor Bassett, has been
sportsmanship.
"It’s always been conducted at the highest level of ethics and
values," Gould said. "It will always be a great fight but it will
always be a clean fight. That’s how competition should be."
For Martin, like Bassett before him, this elemental fact is the
same, and having competed against Gould as both a player and a
coach, the respect is most certainly there.
"It’s not like a rivalry that’s more heated," Martin said. "It’s
a mutual respect for both teams. I had respect then and now.
(Gould) is one of those guys with a high level of integrity. I
enjoy competing against him."
The longevity of this rivalry is seen simply in the chronology
of the two coaches’ most memorable matches.
It was during the ’70s that Gould’s favorite match in the series
was played, a nine-hour marathon that ended at 1 a.m., with the
Bruins edging the Cardinal in front of a packed house in Palo
Alto.
"It was tremendously exciting," Gould said. "No one left, that
was the most exciting match."
For Martin, a more recent vintage fits the bill, last year’s
regular season slugfest up at Stanford that saw the Bruins pull out
the match in the third-set tiebreaker at No. 1 singles.
It is the action over the last 12 months that has secured the
deal.
This time last year, it was the underdog Cardinal knocking off
the undefeated Bruins, a team that they had lost to three times
during the season, to defend their national championship.
This year has kept up the tradition as the teams have met in
battle twice, with each team winning at home by only the slimmest
of margins, 4-3.
Now, as the NCAA tournament gears up, the two teams once again
are among the favorites, with UCLA the top seed, and Stanford, with
its back-to-back championships, weighing in at No. 3.
With the two teams on opposite ends of the draw, the only time
they could meet would be in a rematch of last year’s
championship.STANFORD SPORTS INFO
Stanford’s Ryan Wolters is ranked 11th in the nation.