Greg Hansen: Clancy Shields' Wildcats are rolling in tennis, and it's the 1960s all over again

Arizona’s men’s tennis team has emerged as a Top 25 presence so quickly, so unexpectedly and so remarkably that it’s incomprehensible to think the Wildcats went 1-56 in the Pac-12 from 2011-16.

This is Adia Barnes territory times two.

Yes, coach Clancy Shields’ club has advanced to next week’s Sweet 16. Yes, this team built on players from Sweden and Spain is so unique that Shields bought the Rosetta Stone program in attempt to be conversational in Swedish. And, yes, it appears that the Wildcats could be even better next season and beyond.

About the only thing this rise to prominence isn’t is a this-is-an-all-new narrative.

Arizona’s men’s tennis program was so good in the 1960s that it produced three Wimbledon players: Tucson High’s Bill Lenoir and fellow All-Americans Brian Cheney and Willie Hernandez.

Coach Dave Snyder, who is decades overdue for induction into the UA Sports Hall of Fame, established the Wildcats as a national power to rival the hallowed UA baseball program as the No. 1 sport on campus. Here’s how the Wildcats finished at the NCAA Tournament under Snyder:

1962: Third

1963: Third

1964: Fifth

1965: Fourth

1966: Fourth

1967: Third

1968: Seventh

1969: Eighth

That’s when Texas added to Snyder’s UA salary and hired him to be the Longhorns’ coach. He had attracted too much attention to stay at a WAC school, not only challenging for the NCAA title for a decade, but also by being named the head coach of the U.S. Junior Davis Cup program.

Arizona remained relevant in men’s tennis through the 1970s, winning the WAC in ‘72, ‘73, ‘74 and ‘78, deploying Catalina High School’s Rand Evett — another Wimbledon player — and fellow Catalina all-state players such as Mark and Craig Hardy.

But when Arizona was absorbed by the Pac-8 in 1978, it all blew up. USC, UCLA and Stanford have been so dominant that the rest of the league didn’t have a tennis prayer. Over the last 60 years, Stanford, USC and UCLA have combined to win 44 NCAA championships.

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That’s what Clancy Shields faced when former Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne hired him away from Utah State five years ago this month.

“I started researching tennis coaches who had done good things at places that are tough,” Byrne says now. “I think Clancy was only 26 but he was kicking tail.”

Places that are tough? That would’ve been the most fitting description of Arizona when Shields stepped into 40 years of backstepping. His first two UA teams went 0-15 in the Pac-12. The Wildcats lost to Cal Poly and Drake.

But last weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, Arizona beat Big Ten champ Michigan, a team that entered the season ranked No. 4, and then shattered No. 17 Kentucky’s perfect 16-0 home record.

In an Arizona tennis perspective, it’s like the 1960s all over again.

Taking on tennis’ big shots isn’t anything new to Shields. When he led little ol’ Boise State to the Sweet 16 in 2008 as a player, he was matched against the nation’s No. 1 player, 38-1 Somdev Devvarnan, the NCAA’s defending singles champion. Shields took the future Olympian and Davis Cup standout to the limit before losing 6-4, 7-5.

It was the last match of Shields’ college career.

“He matched Somdev ball for ball,” Boise State coach Greg Patton said. “This team has unbelievably overachieved, and Clancy is the Atlas who is holding up the globe.

“Losing Clancy is like losing your heart and soul. He’s a joy to coach and the type of guy who lights up the room. You have to wear sunglasses around him because he’s so upbeat and driven.”

Shields has repeated his sunglasses role at Arizona.

“Someone said I should take some time off this summer but that’s not what I’m thinking,” Shields said Monday. “We’re in uncharted territory in terms of recruiting and scheduling and if we don’t strike while the iron’s hot, we’ll slip back into mediocrity. We’re going to push the needle and take this program to where it will be a perennial top-five program every year.”

To get this far, to the Sweet 16, Shields initially based his recruiting operation in Europe. Part of that was because there are so few American tennis players of Top 25 ability, most of them locked up by the USCs and Stanfords. Much like the Top 25 of NCAA women’s golf, American college tennis is dominated by foreign players.

So Shields went to Sweden to get rock-solid veterans Filip Malbasic, Jonas Ziverts and 18-3 freshman Gustaf Strom. He went to Norway to sign promising freshman Herman Hoyeraal. Ironically, the soul of this UA team, fifth-year senior Alejandro Reguant of Spain, was part of the incoming freshman class Shields inherited in 2016-17.

Much like the come-from-nowhere story of Arizona’s men’s tennis team, Reguant has defied the odds to win more singles/doubles matches than anyone in school history.

“When I got this job I thought (inheriting) Alejandro was a huge mistake,” Shields said with a laugh. “Another coach told me Alejandro was the nicest kid in the world but not Pac-12 level. But he worked his butt off, got better and ended up being the best leader I’ve ever coached. He’s the driving force on our team.

“Alejandro got the other guys on the team to believe we could do this — they’ve found out how good they really are.”

How good is that? So far, it’s Atlas holding up a globe.