Nick Meister
UCLA Team Page
Courtesy of a UCLA Athletics
LOS ANGELES - Exactly two months to the day from playing his last collegiate match for UCLA, Nick Meister picked up the biggest win of his short professional career on Monday, notching a straight-set victory over Jimmy Wang of Chinese Taipei to earn a spot in the main draw of the Farmers Classic at UCLA's Los Angeles Tennis Center.
Playing in front of friends and family on the tournament's Grandstand Court,
Meister dispatched of Wang, 6-4, 7-6(3) on Monday. He got off to a great start in match, breaking Wang twice to take a 3-0 lead. Although Wang would get one of those breaks back,
Meister worked his way to a 5-4 advantage and was able to close out the set on his serve. It didn't come easy, as
Meister got down 0-40 and eventually needed to fight off four break points to win the set.
"That was a huge confidence booster," said
Meister of fending off the break points. "He played fairly strong tennis to get up 40-0 in that game. Fortunately, I was able to get a couple of free points on my serve and then I just told myself to not make any stupid mistakes. Things kind of went my way and I was able to outlast him and get that game."
Both players remained on serve in the second set, which eventually went to a tiebreaker.
Meister got up a mini-break for a 3-2 advantage in the tiebreaker and then went on to win four of the next five points to close out the set 7-6(3).
"Overall, I thought I played pretty well," said
Meister, who will face either Italy's Paolo Lorenzi, Australia's Marinko Matosevic, Belgium's Xavier Malisse or Germany's Bjorn Phau in the main draw. "I thought I was really serving well and holding my serve fairly routinely for the most part."
Meister, who is also in the main doubles draw with current
UCLA Bruin Marcos Giron, admitted to having little nerves on Monday despite the importance of the occasion and playing someone who was ranked more than 400 places in front of him in the ATP Tour rankings.
"I knew that the guy was in the qualies just like me so he wasn't at the level of, say, Federer," added
Meister. "Why can't I beat him? I just went out there swinging. I knew this was a big opportunity that I might not ever get again and I wanted to take advantage of it."
