University of Georgia Athletics
Stanford '98: `Completely Dominant'
May 26, 2017 | Men's Tennis
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Undefeated and pretty much unchallenged, and never undone by ego or attitude, the 1998 Stanford men's tennis team rolled through its season and the NCAA Championships in Athens with a plan and without a scratch.
One of the three or four best teams ever to take the court produced, undoubtedly, the best, most overwhelming season on record.
"I guess we knew we weren't losing matches, but I don't remember talking about it much," said Paul Goldstein, the senior captain in 1998, an ITA Hall of Fame inductee and now the Cardinal's head coach since 2014.
Led by the Bryan brothers, Bob and Mike, Goldstein and Ryan Wolters — a fearsome top foursome — the Cardinal laid waste to college tennis that season. In dual-match play, Stanford lost a grand total of three points. They lost the doubles point once, Goldstein remembers, and two singles matches (one to Georgia's Steven Baldas, who beat Bob Bryan in the National Indoors).
"They were really dominant; nobody could challenge them that year," said Georgia coach Manuel Diaz, whose team lost to Stanford 4-0 in the finals of the 1998 NCAA tournament. "Maybe other years you could find other great teams that could challenge them, but that year they were completely dominant."
So what do we mean by dominant? Well, Virginia won the NCAA men's title Tuesday night, beating North Carolina 4-2. In that one match the very good Cavaliers dropped one fewer point than the 1998 Cardinal did all season. Stanford went 28-0 and had 25 shutouts, including four in a row in Athens to win the program's fourth straight NCAA title.
"They were just great guys and they wanted to win as a team. It was incredible," said former Stanford coach Dick Gould, who won 17 NCAA team titles.
After winning the NCAA team title, Bob Bryan captured the second "triple crown" ever in the modern era, beating Goldstein in the finals of the singles tournament and partnering with Mike Bryan to win the doubles. The Bryan brothers, then sophomores, turned pro that summer and went on to become the greatest doubles team of all time.
A key to the success of the 1998 season, Gould said, was figuring out who to play where in such a loaded lineup. Gould and Goldstein's memories differ a little on how and when the lineup rotation came about, but regardless, there was a very unique four-man rotation in the top four spots of the singles lineup.
Between the Bryan brothers, Goldstein and Wolters, Stanford had four guys that could play in the top spot for any team in the country. Instead of having them play challenge matches and risk tension and trouble in the locker room — something Gould said he dealt with in 1978, when Stanford was also loaded with elite players, led by freshman John McEnroe — Gould and assistant coach John Whitlinger put together a schedule.
There were 24 dual matches before the team got to the NCAAs and four players worthy of the No. 1 spot. Simple math led to a simple yet pretty out-there solution: everyone gets six matches at each of the top four spots and the whole thing will be scheduled ahead of time.
In addition, Geoff Abrams and Alex Kim (later the 2000 NCAA singles champion) would rotate playing Nos. 5 and 6.
The players bought in all the way — there was a doubles component as well, with the Bryans and Goldstein-Wolters alternating playing Nos. 1 and 2 — and they went out and bashed everyone's brains in.
"It was amazing," Gould said. "It takes a very rare team to do that."
A very rare team of extraordinary achievers that can put whatever ego they have aside and just go out there and win, win, win.
"It just worked out perfectly," Goldstein said Thursday night, after introducing new inductee James Blake at the ITA Hall of Fame's enshrinement banquet. "The year after that was just magical.
"Nobody complained about where they were in the lineup, we pushed each other every day to get better and when everyone got their opportunity to play 1, they were a little more excited and motived, and everyone just won."
Presented here now are the best single-season dual match records (20-win minimum) in the rich and eye-popping history of Stanford tennis:
Geoff Abrams, 1998 — 26-0
Ryan Wolters, 1998 — 22-0
Paul Goldstein, 1998 — 21-0
Jim Grabb, 1983 — 25-1
Bob Bryan, 1998 — 24-1
Jim Thomas, 1994 — 22-1
KC Corkery, 2003 — 21-1
Alex Kim, 1998 — 20-1
The only reason Mike Bryan isn't listed is that he didn't finish enough matches to meet the 20-win minimum. Goldstein was the Pac-10 tournament champion and player of the year, while Wolters and the Bryan Brothers were all-conference. Cruelly, Abrams and Kim, one undefeated and the other with only one loss, were not All-Pac-10.
After the Pac-10 tournament, which featured only singles and doubles, no team matches, the Cardinal prepared to head to Athens. It may as well have been Stanford's home away from home.
One of the striking things about Stanford's success in Athens — 13 of the Cardinal's 17 titles under Gould were won on Georgia's courts — is that the team never became the bad guy. While some other top schools sometimes had trouble with the crowds and maybe didn't play to their full potential during the NCAAs in Athens, Stanford was always embraced and respected, even when denying the Bulldogs a title — as it did in the 1998 final shutout and a 5-3 win over the Dogs in the 1989 final.
"We always really, really embraced Georgia," Gould said. "It was always a thrill to play there and I made my players feel like it was a thrill and a privilege to play there. I don't think they were ever afraid of playing there. I think we were able to get them in a state of mind where they relished playing there. ...
"I put together a little tape of all the songs that had Georgia in them and I'd play that at practice the last week or two before the NCAAs, and players loved that."
Goldstein said the only really tongue-lashing the team got from Gould involved a match against Arizona State and the Stanford men's basketball team's appearance in the Final Four, against Kentucky. The players really wanted to move the time of the match so they could watch the Cardinal's basketball game.
"We got to Arizona State and we lose the doubles point. We're having this magical year, right, and we lost the doubles point for the first time — and he lit us up like a Christmas tree in between the singles and doubles," Goldstein said, smiling at the memory. "He always knew when and how to do it, and this was probably his one chance all year to do it. And we went out in singles and I think the results, down the line, we like, 1-1, 2-1, 0-1 — all six guys got off the court in about 45 minutes.
"We played all six matches and we rolled, and then we went and watched the game as a team."
The best season ever, especially for the guys that played it.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
