Ojai Tennis : Patrick McEnroe Rallies for Pac-10 Title

The problem USC’s Luke Jensen faces when he plays Stanford’s Patrick McEnroe isn’t one of forehands, backhands and serves.

Usually, when Jensen looks across the court during a match he sees an enemy. Or, more like, the Enemy.

On Sunday, it was Patrick McEnroe on the other side. His friend.

And, that is something Jensen has yet to solve this year. In fact, he only solved the riddle of his friend and sometime doubles partner just once, way back when they were juniors.

Jensen came closer than he ever has in their collegiate meetings, but still came up short, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6, to McEnroe Sunday in the Pacific 10 Conference men’s singles final at the 88th Ojai tennis tournament.

The margin of difference was 7 points to 4 in the tiebreaker. The turning point came when Jensen was serving at 3-4 in the tiebreaker. McEnroe ripped a forehand passing shot down the line which Jensen dived for and couldn’t reach. Two points later, McEnroe closed it out with a tough serve that Jensen hit into the net.

That makes Jensen 0 for 3 this season against McEnroe. But he prefers to think of the one-sided series as a matter of his game fitting into McEnroe’s style rather than a result of their friendship. More precisely, McEnroe capitalizes on Jensen’s short topspin ground strokes almost better than anyone else--by taking the ball on the rise to put him on the defensive.

“He’s playing really well right now,” said Jensen, who is ranked No. 2 in the nation. “But then, he’s always played well against me. He has always risen to the occasion.”

It didn’t help that McEnroe had something else to prove, to somehow improve on his lackluster season.

McEnroe, the younger brother of John, got off to a difficult start in 1987 when he missed nearly two months with feet and knee injuries. Some losses to lesser known players followed, and McEnroe began to worry about his chances for an invitation to the NCAA singles tournament.

“Now I should get in,” said McEnroe, ranked No. 17 in the nation. “I’ve had a lot of good wins but also some questionable losses. I don’t see how they could overlook the Pac-10 champion, though.”

Jensen, too, had a less-than-spectacular season for a player of his caliber. After winning the National Indoors in February, he went 4-5 in the Pac-10 at No. 2 singles. That included two losses to McEnroe, the second defeat (6-2, 6-1) coming a week ago last Saturday at Stanford.

Jensen doesn’t feel he plays McEnroe any differently than other opponents, but for one exception.

“You don’t want to offend the other guy, so you give him a lot of calls,” Jensen said. “I think both of us do that . . . almost too much.”

But, more than that, USC Coach Dick Leach sees a different Luke Jensen on the court when McEnroe is on the other side. More often than not, Jensen’s matches are filled with intensity--fist-pumping, yelling at himself and sometimes challenging bad calls.

“He can’t get into his normal game like he usually does, against Patrick and (SMU’s) Richey Reneberg, because they are his good friends,” Leach said. “Other people take offense at that (at a hyped-up player). So he isn’t like that because they are his friends.

“Luke plays better and better the more intense he gets. He’s better against an enemy. In the pros, he’ll have to learn to play without that rah, rah college stuff. Pros will take exception with that.”

Yeah, and taking exception can possibly mean staring at an 80 m.p.h. Ivan Lendl forehand aimed at your midsection.

Leach said, nodding: “You do stuff like that to Lendl or those other guys and they’ll teach you a lesson, like beating you, 6-0, 6-0.”

He doesn’t want to give the wrong impression, however. Leach wouldn’t want Luke Jensen to stop being Luke Jensen at USC.

“I love that enthusiasm he has brought to the team,” Leach said. “We need it. At Stanford last weekend, he asked me whether it was OK to cut loose after he played his singles match. And it helped. . . . We were dead out there.”

Leach realizes that matches against McEnroe and Reneberg are good lessons for Jensen. He’ll have to get used to played a brand of semi-subdued tennis.

“Eventually, he’s going to have to do it with his racket and not his mouth,” Leach said.

Notes

The California women’s team captured the Pac-10 title with 15 points, while UCLA and Stanford tied for second with eight. UCLA was led by senior Jane Thomas, who defeated Cal’s Alissa Finerman, 7-5, 6-0, in the singles final. In five matches, Thomas lost just two sets, one to USC’s Anya Kochoff and the other to Stanford’s Kay Tittle. . . . The UCLA men took the Pac-10 title with the help of a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 win by Brian Garrow and Patrick Galbraith over USC’s Luke Jensen and Eric Amend in the doubles final. UCLA finished with 10 points while USC, Cal and Stanford tied for second with nine. . . . In the last decade or so, the spotlight at Ojai has usually been directed at the Pac-10. Players from other schools--in the collegiate independent and invitational divisions--usually don’t step on the courts at Libbey Park until the final day. Which is fine, usually. More so than not, players from the Pac-10 are the class of college tennis. But this year, the men’s independent collegiate singles final was comparable in quality and excitement to the Pac-10 final. Miles Walker of Chapman College in Orange defeated Greg Failla of Cal State Long Beach, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3. Failla, who was up 3-0 and a service break in the third, defeated both Jensen and Patrick McEnroe this year. Walker, too, has recorded victories over top Division I players. . . . Local Ojai favorite Steve Aniston, who graduated from Nordoff High School but now lives in Irvine, fell short in the men’s open singles final, losing 7-5, 6-4 to Chris Dunk. Lisa Seeman defeated Helen Park, 6-3, 6-2, in the women’s open singles final.