Playing without freshman Jay Goldman was going to add to the No. 55 Arizona men’s tennis team’s struggles heading into its matches against California and Stanford in the Bay Area over the weekend, and they knew it.

Having already lost three consecutive matches upon entering the weekend in Northern California, the last thing Arizona needed was the absence of Goldman, a five-star recruit out of high school.

The Wildcats lost to Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., Friday and Cal in Berkley, Calif., Saturday, both by the count 5-2.

“”It’s tough to go on the road and play without a good player like Jay,”” said senior Bruno Alcala. “”Our mindset was the same heading into the matches and everyone went out there and tried their best, but we just came up a little short.””

The men lost all three of their doubles matches against Cal, having had to make a change on court two in Goldman’s absence. The Wildcats went with Claudio Christen and Pat Metham on court two, but the changes proved to be too much.

Though Arizona arguably has a solid No. 2 group, shifting them to No. 1 while jumbling partners is never easy on a team, regardless of rank or schedule.””Overall, missing Jay was tough because our normal No. 2 player had to play No. 1,”” Metham said, “”so I think it was tough from that standpoint.””

W-tennis struggles against Northern
California schools

The Arizona women’s tennis team didn’t fare much better than the men in its weekend matches against the Northern California teams.

The Wildcats dropped its Friday match to No. 7 California and its Saturday’s match to Stanford, both by scores of 6-1.

“”Any time you have Stanford and Cal in town or you go play them it is going to be a tough weekend,”” said assistant coach Brian Ramirez. “”The girls did a pretty good job and the results weren’t much different from a lot of other teams who play Stanford and Cal.””

Both times Arizona won its first double match, but lost grip on its opponent and eventually gave it away. In order to get the point the Wildcats needed to win two of the three doubles matches, but fell on the following two matches.

Against both Cal and Stanford, Arizona went on to lose all singles games except one.

“”I was not upset at all with the way they competed or played,”” Ramirez said. “”In terms of wins and losses, we aren’t getting a lot of production down the lineup (in singles), so it wasn’t that big of an impact in terms of the doubles point.””