Tennis ready to brave elements
After playing indoors the first month of its spring season, the Utah State University men’s tennis team will get a chance to play outside when it travels to Las Vegas to participate in the University of Nevada Las Vegas-hosted Invitational Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“It will be nice [to play outdoors again],” Head Coach Chris Wright said. “We have to get used to playing in the elements again – playing with the sun in our eyes and [the] wind.”
USU will begin play Thursday at 10 a.m. against Northern Arizona University. From then on, Wright said he doesn’t know who the Aggies will take the court against.
Although he won’t know who the other teams in the tournament are until the tournament director sends him a release, he said the tournament will follow a bracket format.
When asked about playing NAU, Wright said he was happy the Aggies will get a chance to play a team they normally don’t play – a team that is usually one of the better teams in its league.
“They’re [the Lumberjacks] always pretty solid,” he said. “They tend to be in the top half of the Big Sky [Conference].”
Now 2-4 on the season after finishing 1-2 on its Montana/Idaho road swing, Wright said the team has used the last couple of days to recover from playing three matches in three days on that road trip.
“We gave the men the day off yesterday [Tuesday] to try to recuperate from the road trip,” Wright said. “We hit lightly today, and tomorrow we’ll work on a few more things.”
In addition to playing outside, the Aggies will also have to adjust to playing at a lower elevation, Wright said. The ball tends to fly less in lower elevations, he said, thus forcing the team to hit the ball harder to generate depth.
“[Hitting to ball with] depth is something we’ll have to do a good job of,” he said. “Being up at a high elevation, everything tends to sail a little bit deep.”
In order for the Aggies to be successful in Las Vegas, Wright said the team needs to continue to be patient and wait for a short ball to attack. While he said he doesn’t want the team to resort to counter-punching, USU needs to pick its spots to be aggressive.
“If you go for it too soon, the unforced errors will mount,” he said.