UCSB men’s tennis Head Coach Marty Davis received yet another coaching honor to put on his already lengthy list of awards last week, as he was inducted into the USTA Northern California Tennis Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Stanford University.
Davis will join a number of other notable names in the Hall, including playing legends Don Budge and Tom Brown, as well as some of the best coaches in tennis history. Davis, for one, believes his contributions to come from both fields.
“I think I went in as kind of a combination,” Davis said. “I was a number one junior player in northern California, played at Berkeley and then had some success on the pro tour. When I was playing I was one of the guys who founded the ATP tour in 1990 so that might’ve been part of the deal too.”
The Gauchos, then, will be in good hands for what could prove to be an important season.
“We’re setting our sights very high,” Davis said. “We’d like to be a Sweet 16 team in the NCAAs. The building blocks to that are being ranked in the top 40, and to win the Big West Conference. I’m always excited about winning the conference, but we’ve grown tired of losing in the first round so our goal is to break through that. We have to have a good season to do it but we’re capable.”
With a team that lost just two players to graduation, former team captain Josh Finkelstein and Scott Hohenstein, Davis will work to ready his experienced players for a competitive Big West conference, as well as try to prepare the newer ones for immediate contribution.
“We added a transfer from Arizona named Alex Johnson who could be a factor in both singles and doubles and a freshman coming in named Axel Bouillin who has been doing really well and has been one of the top juniors in southern California,” Davis said. “We should have a very good team, but the conference keeps getting better and better too.”