The last Swedish tennis player to play at LSU was a star on and off the court.
In 2008, Sebastian Carlsson, a native of Upssala, Sweden, was named First-Team All-Louisiana and an Intercollegiate Tennis Association Scholar-Athlete — all in his freshman year.
By the end of his time at LSU, the former Louisiana Freshman of the Year had become an ITA Doubles All-American and had received academic honors from either the ITA or the Southeastern Conference every season.
In 2014, LSU has another talented Swede, but the road to success in his freshman year has been a long one.
Simon Freund, No. 110 in the International Tennis Federation juniors division, was highly recruited out of Stockholm, but he struggled on the outset of his college career.
“[The tennis in college] is so different from Sweden,” Freund said. “The competition and level of all the players is so much harder here. I kind of came off and thought it was going to be easier to start off.”
Freund lost five of his first seven singles matches to start the fall season, including dropping his first three matches at the SEC Fall Classic in Gainesville, Florida.
“Even the so called ‘bad players’ are really good in the U.S.,” Freund said. “The level of competition is so much harder here. In Sweden, most of the tournaments I can kind of float through the first two or three rounds until it gets really tough.”
It wasn’t until the ITA Southern Regional in Auburn that Freund began to settle down.
After dropping his opening match against Evan Karatzas of Nicholls State, the freshman achieved two straight wins in the consolation bracket, including one over his junior teammate Harrison Kennedy, before falling in the semifinals to eventual champion Chi-Shan Jao of Tulane.
“I loosened up a bit in my second match and played much better. Then, I got a nice win against my teammate, Harrison,” Freund said. “In the match that I lost, I was looking over the tape with [assistant coach] Danny [Bryan], and we saw a lot of stuff that I can improve, but it feels really good that I’m starting to loosen up.”
Bryan said Freund isn’t the only European who needed to adapt to playing at an American university. Most European players, he said, must transition from competing on red clay in their home countries to a hard surface.
“[European players] will have, sometimes, games with longer points [on clay court],” Bryan said. “A lot of the American kids will have bigger games, and they can play shorter points.”
Clay courts cause the ball to bounce slower and higher off the surface than hard courts. It allows an easier return after a serve or volley, which extends the length of each individual point within a match.
Junior Boris Arias, a native of La Paz, Bolivia, also was accustomed to the clay courts in South America, but he said his biggest transition was playing with a team.
“You pretty much play on your own [in international play], so when you come here, you play as a team,” Arias said. “At least for me, it really helped a lot. It’s more fun to actually play as a team.”
Cultural differences also are a factor Kennedy has noticed playing with international players.
“I know the guys coming from the international circuit have to make some major adjustments, not just on tennis court but also culturally,” Kennedy said. “It takes a while to get used to playing around a bunch of Americans and kind of being away from home.”
Freund, though, has taken all the physical and cultural changes in stride, Bryan said.
“Simon is a really, really good kid. He really has embraced everything we have put in front of him,” Bryan said. “When he goes home for Christmas and is able to kind of absorb everything that has happened this fall, he’ll come back and be even more prepared for the spring.”
Freund already has shown his potential for the spring season. In the Tigers’ most recent competition, the Texas A&M Conference Challenge, Freund went 2-2 in singles play and 2-1 in doubles with Arias as his partner.
“He’s really kept his nose to the grindstone and has really worked hard,” Kennedy said. “He’s looking like he can be a good contributing factor to our success this year.”