Most people go to California for three things: wine, cheese and surfing. That, of course, used to be true until this year. Now that there is no energy left in the state, there seems to be a substantial drop in the number of tourists making trips out there.
But four Princeton students braved the energy crisis and added one more reason to go to the West Coast — tennis.
Women's senior captains Priya Bhupathi and Kristi Watson competed alongside top men's players Trevor Smith and Dan Friedman in the World Team Tennis nationals this weekend in California.
The tournament consisted of 16 high-ranking teams from around the country, and after playing five exciting matches the women finished with a 1-4 record and placed 14th overall.
The field for the WTT National Collegiate Championships was made up of qualifiers from WTT Regional Tournaments held last season, national at-large selections based on combined season-ending ITA national rankings, and the champion from last season's WTT National Small College Championships.
Each team was comprised of at least two men, two women and a coach. Each team match consisted of five sets, with one set each of men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles.
Match winners are determined by the total number of games won in the five matches.
The weekend's numbers conceal the level of play the Tigers dealt to the other nationally-ranked teams. In fact, they came just short of beating the tournament champions Oklahoma State in a close 19-25 loss. The Cowboys went on to defeat South Alabama in the championship game, 27-20.
"The tournament went well," Watson said. "I know that it was a long trip out there and maybe we did not do as well as we would have liked but I think people worked through some problems and hopefully ECAC's (Oct. 13-15) for both the boys and girls will turn out well."
Juniors Kavitha Krishnamurthy and Vanti Bhargava also left a mark this weekend at the Cissie Leary Invitational in Philadelphia.
Both made it past the first round in singles play. Krishnamurthy lost in the quarterfinals to a notoriously strong opponent from Ohio State, Sandhaf Pervez, 6-3, 6-4. Bhargava put up a strong three-set fight against Yale's No. 3 player Elizabeth Kaufman.
Later they joined forces in their second doubles tournament together and defeated Ohio State before losing to a Penn team later in the tournament.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team held down the fort at their own Princeton Fall Invitational, taking on Rutgers and Ivy rivals Brown and Columbia.
The Tigers did not lose a single game in singles play against either Rutgers or Columbia, crushing the Scarlet Knights, 6-0, and pounding the Lions, 7-0. And in doubles competition, sophomore Jackie Arcario and sophomore Alex Kobishyn won the A flight, while sophomore Katherine Roberts and freshman Kristin Carlin had equal success in the B flight.
"Considering all our doubles lost in the first round last week, this is a marked improvement," head coach Louise Gengler said.
The absence of Krishnamurthy, Bhupathi and Watson, showed through in the Tigers' third match at the Invitational, as Brown stole away with a 5-3 win.
After a busy weekend with the women's tennis team spread out from coast to coast. Let's hope the Californians got a lesson in efficiency — criss-crossing the nation, the women's tennis team seems to know what maximizing energy is all about.
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