Mike Munson from Phoenix,AZ was one of Peter Bartlett's top recruits during the 1998 season. Mike was captain for the team and played singles and doubles for the team. Mike graduated from USF with a degree in finance in 2002. What are you doing with your life today?
- After I graduated in 2002, I worked in San Francisco for Deloitte until 2004. I moved back home to Arizona, and have been working in finance since then. Currently, I am working for Cole Capital (www.colecapital.com) as a financial reporting analyst. The company is absolutely world class, from the products we sell to the people I work with. Definitely watch for this company to be the leading brand in real estate in the next few years.
I started swimming in the summer of 2001 at USF, and have been hooked ever since. So, I am still swimming and started doing half and full marathons when I moved back home.
I've sorta started to play tennis again. I recently joined a USTA team. Two weeks ago I played my first real match in 5 years. I got waxed. I was hurting in places I never knew I had places for 5 days. Thank God for Advil. I was taking it like candy after that match.
Why did you choose USF?
- As you and Coach will recall, all I wanted to do was hit tennis balls. It was the same during high school. I thought that if I got in with a good college coach, and got a lot of playing time that I might be able to play on the professional circuit after college. USF's team at the time really lined up well with those two requirements. When I came on in 1998, the tennis team was in a rebuilding phase. Coach was/is a world class technician and coach. When I came to the school and met Peter that pretty much sealed the deal.
What were your fondest and most memorable moments playing for USF?
- Well Bulldog(Sean's nickname on the team), there are a couple here. During 2001, my junior year, I had been banged up all season. I was playing the best tennis of my life in Winter of 2000, but I got sick on a trip to Ventura, CA and never got back into that groove. The team goes down to Pepperdine for the WCC Conference(April 2001), and the morning before matches start Coach and I go to Ralph's to get Gatorade and such for the matches. So there we are getting Gatorade, and he tells me that this might be his last season as head coach. It was a shocking moment. I don't know if this was a master stroke by Coach but it really lit a fire under my ass.
Sean: Yeah, I remember you telling me about that before the WCC Conference matches started. I gave it all I had during that Conference tourney winning my match against Pepperdine and Gonzaga. That definitely affected my play during the match against Gonzaga. Here I am coming in during the 2000-2001 year seeing that USF finished 8th for like the past 10 years or what not and here we have a chance to finish 7th for the first time in years. I was playing #6 against Shaun Whitney from Gonzaga and just playing a terrible match. I lost the first set but from what you had said earlier I just kept hanging in there. I was aware the dual match score was 2-2 and I just found a way to win the next 2 sets. It was pure will in that match. I just couldn't let us down and so I fight and claw and win to put us up 3-2 and I go over to your court to see you winning one of the biggest matches for the program (I wonder what would have happened if we had finished 8th again) I run onto your court as if we had won the NCAA Championships when in reality we had just finished 7th in the WCC. That was just a start of something special for the USF Dons Tennis program that many people don't know or simply overlook. I mean here we came from 1/1/2 scholarships playing teams like Pepperdine and SCU who had doubled up on us but in my mind I wanted whoever we played to respect us. That year we never lost 7-0 in any dual match which sounds ludacris now but believe me it meant alot for us back then. Now USF has 4 1/2 scholarships and sometimes the current generation just doesn't know how good they have it. There is no reason the teams now can't finish Top 3 in the WCC on a consistent basis.
MM: Yeah. Peter had spent a lot of time and energy with me developing my game. I couldn't imagine ending the season without really putting everything out there. That day I had a good match against Ryan Redondo--who was #5 for Pepperdine--and ended up beating Joel Wilke of Gonzaga to clinch our #7 spot in the WCC in 2001. After the match everyone rushed the court and Dusty Hall picked me up and carried me around. It was a defining moment in my life.
What did the experience playing under Coach Bartlett teach you about yourself and life?
Coach taught me so much. For me he's my own personal John Wooden. If I had to wrap everything together that he imparted to me, it would be this: Being a great tennis player, or a great anything, isn't an excuse not to be a decent human being. When Coach steps onto the court as a player or a coach, he is always giving everything he has but he never demeans his opponent or the opposing team. All the guys we played against, he always walked up after the match and shook their hand after the match. He was just so classy and dignified about how he treated people. So, that's one thing I have really made a point to do in my life.
Also, when I was playing I always noticed how relentless Coach was at perfecting his craft, and adding to his body of knowledge. During Conference, he would always watch how every other team would warm-up, drill, cool-down, etc. That's something that I am constantly trying to apply to what I do professionally, always looking at what other people do well, and then taking that to apply to what I am doing.
Tennis wise, there were a lot of things that Coach told me over my tenure as a player that took some time to figure out. When we were working on my serve he said, "Mike, you need to find the yoga asana within the serve." I had no idea what he meant at the time. After a few weeks of practice, I figured out that he wanted me to find my own dispassionate rhythm to the serve, something I could call up irregardless of the situation. I still think about that when I go to serve. Then there was another thing he said: "Mike, get down like a big cat." I still have no clue what this means.
Are there any things you wish you could have done better?
- Looking back on the whole thing I really wish I could have won more matches. Other than that, no regrets.
What memorable moments do you have with your teammates that made our team special?
- Well Sean, I still have really great memories of warming up with you before every match we played during 2001. That was cool. There were some others that still make me laugh.
Joel Wilke of Gonzaga had Christian Dyvik's number. Wilke just neutralized Christian's atomic ground strokes. After Christian had lost for the second time in a row he was fiercely angry. He was just walking back and forth on the court like a caged panther. I walked by and heard him say, "He is soooo laz-ay. He is lay-see-er than a hip-hop-a-tay-moose." I laughed so hard I almost soiled myself.
When I was a freshman, our number one player on the team was Asaf Shafir. Asaf was born in Israel, spent some time in high school in New Jersey, so he was still sort of figuring out America. We went to Stockton to play University of the Pacific. It was extremely overcast that day, and we drove through a heavy industrial zone to get to the University.
Asaf says: "This is like ahhhh ahhhh some industrial type of ghetto."
"In my country, Asaf," I began, "We have a word for a place like this. We call it The South." We both lost it. It was hilarious.
What do you hope for future USF Dons tennis teams and the tradition you helped start?
- I hope that the guys on the team really stick together. When I was a freshman, all the guys on the team would go to dinner on Friday night at Little Joe's. So, I hope they do something like that, or have some new traditions that really bring them together like that. Also, a few weeks after my last match as a Don, Peter called me up and took me out for a beer at the Plough and Stars--the greatest Irish bar in the Richmond. He said it was a tradition. I hope he is still doing this. Back then people could smoke in bars, and there was an Irish folk band playing. We each had a pint of Guinness and just hung out. It was a great moment.
What are your thoughts on Coach Bartlett and his coaching philosophy? Did you feel he helped you on the court and off?
- I'd say that Coach's philosophy is very simple: Always put yourself in a situation to win. Even though it's a simple statement, there's a lot of planning, and training that goes into executing that philosophy. I really didn't understand this that well when I was playing for him, but now that I have been removed from competitive tennis for a few years now, I have a much better grasp of what he meant. The beauty of this philosophy is that it applies to anything you do.
I've always been a big quote guy. When I was a freshman, Peter pulled me aside and said, "Mike Munson," you know how he starts sentences with his players name, "Practice consistently. You don't need to kill yourself each day, but make sure you get in touch with the ball each day." This applies to anything you are working on. If you really want to achieve a high level of success, you need to "get in touch" with your craft every day. Practice, practice, practice, but understand the balance. He would also say, "Listen to the body." So he basically set the stage for understanding how to train and push myself professionally.
What advice would you give to the next generation of players as they leave the world of college tennis for the working world?
- Well, after you graduate you will kinda have to rebuild your life. After I graduated I cut back on playing tennis, and started swimming competitively, and I worked a lot. So I was doing things, but it was much different than college where there's always something going on, good guys from the team to hang out with, etc. So, I'd just say be ready for things to be different than college, and go out and do different things.
When most guys on the team think about Mike Munson, other than your work ethic, the first things that people probably remember is your laugh and your monstrous appetite. You haven't lost those have you?
- The laugh is still the same. It's genetic. I'll have that until the day I die. As far as the appetite, I've had to taper that back. After I graduated and started working, I'd still eat enormous portions of food. Ask Coach. He seriously encouraged me to think about being a competitive eater or "food fighter." Well, it caught up to me pretty fast. I ballooned up to one-hundred and ninety pounds plus. It was a wake-up call. So since then, I've had to eat smaller portions more frequently.
Sean: Yeah I hope your are staying in decent shape. Man could you eat. Then again we were like professional athletes working our everyday. I remember we went to In and Out and you use to plow through those burgers like they were going out of style.
Anything else?
- Nope, that's about all that I have have in the tank right now. But if any of the guys want to shoot me an email, my account is munsonmichael@hotmail.com.
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