Marcos Verdasco at practice this week. Photo by Heather Morse, ODE.

Yesterday the ODE’s Ben Schorzman took a good look at Oregon’s tennis teams, which are solid programs that are stuck in a conference where more than half the teams are ranked in the top 25. Last season Oregon’s men went winless (0-7) in the league. The women fared a little better, 3-5. 

What Schorzman looked at was how one Oregon player, Spaniard Marcos Verdasco, has a connection with two of the world’s best players. 

And one of them happens to be his cousin, who played in the Australian Open semifinals this week.

That cousin would be Fernando Verdasco, the No. 14 player in the world, and a guy who Marcos has played with off and on during the summers and who let Marcos travel with him on tour a bit during the summers, as well. It’s a pretty cool connection, made even moreso by the fact he has met and knows Rafael Nadal a bit, too. Nadal, of course, is the world’s No. 1 ranked player and a winner of five Grand Slam events.

If you’re Marcos Verdasco in this, who do you root for? Well it’s easy to pick family. But for the first time, two Spaniards played each other in the Aussie Open semis, and that’s nothing to knock, either.

We’ll see whether Oregon’s program can be something to be dealt with as the season goes on.