STARKVILLE — At the ITA National Team Indoor Championships in Charlottesville, Virginia, Nuno Borges was showing his frustration.
Borges was playing the No. 1 player in the nation, Petros Chrysochos of Wake Forest; he lost the first set 4-6 and found himself just two points away from losing both the second set and the match. As he’s returning to the court from a stoppage of play, he grabbed a towel and spikes it to the ground.
This time last year, MSU men’s tennis coach Matt Roberts could see this from across the arena and know Borges was coming unglued; now when he sees it, he knows something great is coming.
“It gives you goosebumps if you’re watching,” Roberts said.
Borges followed up the towel spike by winning three straight games, tying the second set at five games each before it was suspended — no small feat against the country’s top-rated player. It was the most recent example of Borges’ mental revolution of sorts that has led to an astounding climb up the national rankings. He was ranked 43rd in September; now he’s ranked fourth, at one point ranking third to be the highest ranked MSU men’s singles player since 2002.
“It took him a while to control his emotions, get more mature out there on the court,” Roberts said. “He’s so competitive. He’s one of those guys that you love to coach, but at the same time, they’re hard to coach in the beginning because they’re so competitive when they’re not winning and they don’t have a solution to put together points, games, sets, they want to freak out.”
When he would freak out, it would most often be in the form of bad body language or complaining, nothing to the extreme of throwing his racket. Roberts said Borges would look, “defeated and mad.”
What made Borges’ transformation process tricky was his not knowing a problem existed. He said what made him receptive to change was video evidence of its negative impacts.
“We film every match, so we would sit down and show him what he did. It got to the point where he wouldn’t realize what he was doing,” Roberts said. “He would snap at me, and after the match, I would say, ‘Do you realize you said this to me, that you acted this way?’ And he would be so apologetic.”
Thus, over regular conversations in front of video from matches, began Borges’ revolution. Keeping Borges’ competitive fire while calming its drawbacks was a tricky balance for Roberts: he said there were times when Borges would exhibit qualities of tennis great John McEnroe, letting his outward anger draw out improved play. Roberts saw those for what they were: pleasant aberrations.
“I think Nuno was a guy like that in the beginning, but I realized there wasn’t really anything going on, he was just playing. He wasn’t processing why he was losing,” Roberts said. “Now, he’s usually neutral to positive. He’s doing a good job of understanding why it’s happening and having a solution for that problem.”
As Borges put it, “I love to compete, and sometimes I get too emotional. It’s not a bad thing. I just lost control and started focusing on the wrong things.”
The fruits of his labor came in the fall — not that the beginning of the season gave any indication that it would.
MSU’s second event of the fall was the ITA All-American Championships played in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before the singles tournament began, Roberts arranged for Borges to play a practice match against who was then the No. 1 player in the country, Ohio State’s Mikael Torpegaard, in hopes of proving to Borges that he belonged with the best.
The encounter had the opposite effect: he lost 6-1, 6-0. Borges had to go straight into tournament play and did not react well to the practice match, losing his first match in the main draw to Wake Forest’s Skander Mansouri in straight sets.
Borges’ run to the upper echelon of collegiate men’s tennis began after that loss.
He was sent to the consolation bracket in Tulsa where he won three matches before forcing a third set in his semifinals loss. Borges carried that straight into winning the ITA Southern Regional Championships, winning all six matches and punching his ticket to the national indoor championships as he earned his first tournament victory at MSU.
His run to the semifinals of the national indoor championships in November was one filled with redemption: he beat Cal’s Florien Lakat — a MSU transfer — in the round of 16 before exacting revenge on Masouri of Wake Forest in the quarterfinals. Although he could not secure a third revenge win in his semifinals loss to Torpegaard, the top-ranked player from the practice match, the performance was enough to catapult Borges into the top 10 as an individual.
“The fall went so fast,” Borges said. “It was like we played in three tournaments and people were telling me I was going to be in the top 10. There was a lot of surprise about it. I just didn’t see it coming.”
Roberts did see it coming — and not just mentally. Roberts could see Borges getting stronger in his legs and generally playing bigger, particularly in his serve and his forehand. It helped him stand up to the task when walking into the Indoor Team Championships last weekend as the nation’s No. 3 player.
“It brings a lot of responsibility, it brings a lot of pressure,” Borges said. “I played some of the best players in the nation, which is really good for me. I want to play the best players.”
In Charlottesville, Borges went up against the Nos. 1, 9 and 25 players and went 1-0 (the other two matches were suspended before they were completed). Borges’ win — over Northwestern’s No. 25 Strong Kirchheimer, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 — was the clinching match as No. 16 MSU left Charlottesville after upsetting the No. 7 Wildcats.
The Northwestern match was yet another proving point for Borges: Roberts said there was a moment his competitive fire almost caused him to snap again, but Borges regained his composure to win that match.
“You could see the fire in him,” Roberts said, “we just had to mold him and move that energy in a positive way.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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