University of Georgia Athletics
Athens Moments: USC Missions Accomplished
May 21, 2017 | Men's Tennis
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
How do you top three straight national championships? Win one more, of course.
The USC men's tennis team entered the 2012 NCAA Championships in Athens having won three straight titles. The Trojans were the best team from top to bottom and had the nation's best player in senior Steve Johnson, who was the NCAA singles champion in 2011 and headed toward the greatest collegiate career of all time.
No pressure, right? Anything more would have to just be the icing on top, right?
"I normally don't feel pressure in those situations, but that was the one where I felt a lot of pressure," USC coach Peter Smith said earlier this month. "I felt like Steve gave up a lot to come back, and if we didn't win, it would be considered a failure — that's a strong word, but maybe a failure."
Instead of turning pro on the high of a third straight team title and the singles title in 2011, followed by a very successful summer and fall playing pro events as an amateur, Johnson returned for his senior season.
"He came back to help the team win four NCAA championships, and for that to come to fruition was an amazing accomplishment," Smith said.
The Trojans were mostly dominant in the regular season, but they weren't perfect. Their only blemish, a 4-3 loss at home to UCLA. Meanwhile, Johnson kept winning singles matches, adding to a streak that was venturing into uncharted territory.
By the time USC arrived in Athens, as the prohibitive favorites, Johnson's win streak had passed 60 in a row. But he wasn't near 100 percent physically, playing through an abdominal injury "and I've had this shin issue for six weeks that no one's really known about," Johnson told reporters after winning the singles title. And then he got food poisoning right after arriving.
It was an inauspicious beginning to a grand finale, for both the Trojans and their incredible run and to Johnson's great career. By the time Johnson left Athens, his NCAA championship haul would be four team titles and two singles titles.
"One is special, so it's absurd to say that he's going to walk away with six NCAA titles," Smith said. "It's something he's really proud of and something he really earned."
In the team event, the Trojans looked quite dominant as they made their way to the final, even getting some revenge against longtime rival UCLA, beating the Bruins 4-1 in the semis. In the final USC met a third-seeded Virginia squad that had only dropped one point in the tourney, beating Pepperdine 4-1 in the semis.
It was a finals matchup between the legendary program, already with 19 national championships and 20 players in the ITA Hall of Fame, and the emerging superpower. USC took down the Cavaliers in the final, 4-2, but Virginia has won three of the past four titles since.
That final was legendary, mainly because of all the stops and starts due to rain, and that it ended about 10 hours after it began, in the Lindsey Hopkins Indoor Courts, after 1 a.m.
"I actually didn't realize how much pressure I felt in that match, but as soon as we won, and it's probably the only time this has happened to me, I broke down," Smith said. "I think really just winning it for Steve, not that he was the whole team, but he had definitely given up the most to make it happen."
Like Michael Jordan with the great Bulls teams, Johnson gets most of the attention when talking about USC's run from 2009-12. And all of it is earned, but a star player can only do so much in tennis. Great teams win titles, not good teams with a great player.
Clinching the match was freshman Yannick Hanfmann, who rallied from a break down in the third set and won the deciding point in a tiebreaker. Another notable player on that team was a career walk-on Daniel Nguyen, the Trojans' No. 3 player and a three-time All-Pac-12 selection.
Not only was Johnson the top seed in singles, with a win streak now in the mid-60s, he and partner Roberto Quiroz were seeded second in the doubles. After winning two rounds, the plug was pulled in the middle of their quarterfinal match against eventual runner-ups Raony Carvalho and Gonzalo Escobar of Texas Tech.
"He was so fatigued and being pushed so hard that we literally had to default him from doubles in the middle of the match," Smith said. "We had to make choices there and he was the No. 2 seed in doubles, so he had a good chance to triple crown it."
The loaded lightened a bit, Johnson could focus on finishing off his career with a second singles title, joining the likes of Georgia's Mikael Pernfors and Matias Boeker as two-time NCAA singles champions. Pernfors had enjoyed a 42-match win streak in his Bulldog career, but Johnson had passed that long before.
When Johnson beat Kentucky's Eric Quigley in the final, 6-4, 6-4, it was the 72nd straight victory. There was certainly joy and excitement on Johnson's face after he won on court 3, but relief and fatigue also appear very present, as well.
There was a lot of relief, Smith said, but so much more.
"The good news about all that is, that moment was so big that everything else paled in comparison," he said. "To win an NCAA singles championship, it didn't matter that it was two in a row; didn't mater that it was the 72nd win in a row; I didn't feel like any of that mattered.
"The first thing that mattered was: let's win, and then everything will go along with it. And that's what he did."
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.