DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Sophomore
Travis Rettenmaier is a huge asset for UCLA’s
mens’ tennis team, despite only being 17 years old. His team and
the coaching staff say they can count on his game.
By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Contributor
Travis Rettenmaier said himself that he shows signs of
immaturity. He gets sugar highs everyday at 8 p.m. He loves playing
video games and hates reading books. And he is very emotional and
hyper.
Why?
Not because he refuses to grow up or because he has some strange
psychological disease. Simply put, Rettenmaier is a young for a
college student.
As a 16-year-old, Rettenmaier, a Southern California native,
came to UCLA last year to play for the men’s tennis team. He
worked extremely hard the last three months of high school so that
he could graduate early and come to UCLA.
And a year and a half later as a 17-year-old sophomore,
Rettenmaier is now a key member of one of the best college teams in
the country.
Rettenmaier came to college in the first place because he wanted
to build his maturity on and off the court. The competition at the
junior level was just not challenging enough for him.
He has the same attitude now as he did then about coming to
college: he wants to get good enough to be a pro, and he wants to
do it fast.
“I have no other ambitions than to be a professional
tennis player at this point,” Rettenmaier said.
“I’m looking to work as hard as I can, train as hard as
I can, and get as good as I can as soon as I can.”
So why not go pro now? After all, many tennis players skip
college altogether to become professionals in their early
teens.
But to Rettenmaier, the choice was obvious.
“I am not mature enough right now,” he said,
“and I know that. I have a lot of work to do.”
And Rettenmaier has some first-rate mentors to let him know when
he is mature enough to go pro. His mother, Karen Dawson, who passed
away in the fall, played for UCLA from 1971-1973 and went on to
have a successful professional career. Rettenmaier’s father,
Travis, and his sister, Bettina, also play tennis and have both
captured national championships in USTA events.
Rettenmaier is working hard to get his game to the level it
needs to be competitive on the professional level. He worked very
hard over the summer, currently practices several times a day, and
maintains several personal coaches, both in the Los Angeles area
and in Northern California.
He also uses UCLA Assistant Coach Jason Sher to help him with
his fundamentals.
“Jason is one of my favorite coaches I have ever
had,” Rettenmaier said. “Even if it is at 5 a.m., he is
always ready to go (rally).”
Sher thinks highly of Rettenmaier as well.
“He’s got as much determination as anyone I’ve
ever worked with,” Sher said. “He is really a unique
player.”
According to Sher, Rettenmaier’s serve-and-volley game is
excellent, and his potential when he goes pro will be limitless.
But he is not quite ready to take on the world just yet.
“He is a couple of years away,” Sher said.
“For now, he has the potential to dominate college tennis if
he decides to stay.”
But can Rettenmaier hold off his dream for a year or two more,
or will he go pro next year and not come back to UCLA?
“I’m 99.99 percent coming back this year,” he
said.
Coach Martin says it is most likely that Rettenmaier will go pro
after his junior year.
“I think he’ll come back one more year,”
Martin said. “One year of solid college tennis would do him
good. If we got a senior year out of him, then great. But I
can’t tell you I’m even 50 percent sure we’ll see
him his senior year.”
But for now, that is the distant future, and there are more
troubling worries for Rettenmaier and his team. The NCAA
Championships start this weekend with Regionals, when UCLA hosts
Cal State-Sacramento at the Los Angeles Tennis Center at 1 p.m. on
Saturday. UCLA hopes to recapture the NCAA title, which it
hasn’t won since 1984. And Rettenmaier hopes to deliver for
both his team and coach.
“We will be ready for the NCAA’s, guaranteed,”
Rettenmaier said. “Coach Martin has been in a drought, and we
want to get him that title.”
Although many of his teammates are rising stars, what separates
Rettenmaier from the others is that he is the only American in the
starting line up. Every other starting player is a native of
Europe.
In his first season, Rettenmaier was frustrated at the lack of
Americans on the team. After all, the tennis team only gets 2 1/2
scholarships, and Rettenmaier wasn’t receiving any of the
money.
“When I first came here, I thought, why are these
foreigners coming in here and taking my scholarships. I got really
pissed off at it,” he said.
Rettenmaier also got angry because the Europeans were taking his
spot in the starting lineup. As a freshman, he only played at
doubles. He had a successful year, partnered mainly with fellow
freshman Lassi Ketola to compile an 18-8 record for the year.
But he never got a chance to start at singles. It was difficult
for him to sit on the sidelines, since just a year earlier he was
one of the top 16-and-under juniors in the world.
“Last year, I was pissed off the whole time. It was really
bothersome for me,” Rettenmaier said. “I just hated it.
I had always played both singles and doubles, no matter what team I
was on. It was really weird.”
Martin agreed with Rettenmaier’s self-evaluation.
“Not starting in the singles line-up last year really hurt
him, because he is as fierce a competitor as anyone on our
team,” Martin said.
This year, things have turned around for Rettenmaier. After
working hard over the summer, he had a superb fall season, going
11-4 at singles. The solid record earned him the No. 6 singles spot
on the team this year and has gotten him much more excited about
the team and his own individual game.
He has certainly proved he belongs in the singles lineup. His
record this year is 14-1 in dual matches, and 27-7 overall, helping
the team to a 20-2 overall record and the No. 2 seed in the
upcoming NCAA Championships.
Rettenmaier has anchored the back part of the UCLA singles
lineup to a point where his teammates can count on him for a
guaranteed victory.
“Our team knows that we can count on Travis to win every
time he goes out onto the court,” said Rettenmaier’s
friend and confidant, freshman Marcin Matkowski.
Having a guaranteed point is what wins NCAA Championships, and
the Bruins hope that with Rettenmaier’s help they will be
able to go all the way this year.