News from Costa Mesa F24 Qualifying

Written by: Staff on 19th September 2011

News from Costa Mesa F24 Qualifying |

I’ve spent the past two days at the Costa Mesa tennis center observing and watching the tennis unfold throughout the qualifying rounds. There were some quality meetings between ranked players in the first and second rounds which makes this $10,000 event seem pretty tough! However as the players get ready for their 4th and final round, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve seen as well as what I’ve been up to.

Yesterday I watched top players from Ole Miss, UCLA, LMU, and UCI. It seems as though Collegiate programs are able to send 4 or 5 of their players on the roster to Futures events around the country. Last week at Claremont, University of San Diego had sent 4 or 5 of their players up with coaches to compete. I wish I would’ve been able to play futures during the school year when I was at BYU! I also happened to watch Ryan Harrison’s little brother, Christian, compete and beat SoCal’s Chris Kearney in 3 sets. I thought that was an upset because Kearney is known to have one of the biggest 1, 2 combos around in the form of serve+forehand. Christian hung tough and made Chris play a lot of balls and apparently it worked! Today was also a similar story as he took down UCLA’s Alex Brigham in straight sets. I foresee all these matches Christian playing to work to his advantage because he is constantly putting himself in an environment where he’s forced to play tough matches consistently against experienced players. My friend Dennis Lajola also managed to make it through the draw, dealing with a strong server yesterday, then defeating a ranked player in 3 sets today for more confidence.

One of the more interesting events that took place today was when the Aussie players came to the courts this morning. Dennis and I were on site first, but they came second with an entourage consisting of a coach and physio trainer from A.I.S. (Australian Institute of Sport). Sean Berman (I think of New Zealand), and Luke Saville, 2011 Junior Wimbledon singles champion. I watched their warm up and thought the Aussies were mirroring some of the Spanish movement patterns that I’ve learned about. For the first 20 minutes, both Sean and Luke didn’t touch a ball nor racket. They started with a few laps, stretches, shoulder rotations, the usual stuff. I liked the fact they used small yellow exercise bands, wrapped around their ankles/shins during this next part. Doing shuffles, lunges, and then moving onto actual tennis specific footwork drills all the while wearing these bands. They finally picked up their rackets after 10 minutes of this. The physio was leading all of these warm ups, and he had them do Spanish footwork drills of upward movement, lateral movement, and then backwards movement, all with recovery shuffling included. They shadow-swung at balls that weren’t there on both deuce and ad sides, grooving their strokes without hitting a ball. After 20 minutes, these guys must have been feeling some kind of burn in their legs (And let me tell you, these guys aren’t scrawny. All this legwork leaves them with a really solid base for movement and strength). All this got me thinking, I could do this too if I just got to my practices 10 or 15 minutes earlier, and probably develop stronger legs in the process! I need to invest in a small yellow exercise band…

The courts and the conditions (Cloudy and cold) at Costa Mesa have turned the game into trench warfare. Players are backing up to the fence, ripping groundstrokes high and heavy, hoping to outlast and out-grind their opponents. I rarely see a serve and volley or chip and charge executed. Granted there are net approaches, but only when a player is forced to move forward or sees his opponent completely out of position. I guess these are the standards for grueling qualifying play because the weapons on display aren’t big enough to allow for such movement forward. This is why I believe my chances at Laguna Niguel are good. The courts are fast, the temperature is predicted to be high (Balls fly in hot conditions), and I’m relatively familiar with grinding long hours at the club were the tournament will be held. Today I practiced 4 times (Warmed up Dennis Lajola, a junior I’ve been working with for a few weeks, Evan Song, and then another junior down in Laguna Niguel) for short spurts, really just working on my game and shots, not really caring if they went in or not. I wanted to feel completely comfortable stepping into my backhand, feeling the top of my racket on my backswing, and chasing down every ball. My shoulder is still tender so I’m giving it a few more test days before really trying it out, but I’m patient and not worried about it because I’m doing everything I can for it right now and it just needs time.

Grinding,

Shubert