Springtime In Paris; a Hot Time in Athens

Written by: Staff on 29th May 2012

Springtime In Paris; a Hot Time in Athens |

It’s springtime in Paris and we are in the first week of the French Open. Beautiful Paris. Beautiful warm days and cool nights and the excitement of the opening matches flooding throughout the city. But tennis around the world doesn’t stop it’s grind just because a Grand Slam gets under way. Just here in the US alone, literally millions of recreational tennis players braved record heat to celebrate Memorial Day weekend with their favorite game. Across the country literally hundreds of tournaments were taking place as tournament directors tried to take advantage of the three day weekend with special events. And in Athens, Georgia, they were playing the finals of the Division I Individual Mens and Womens Championships in Singles and Doubles at the University of Georgia. It wasn’t quite as nice as Paris as the entire East coast was dealing with a heat wave and temperatures in Athens hovered around 90. Remember that it is 20 degrees hotter on the surface of a tennis court and they say it is another 10 degrees above that about 3 feet above the surface. Then there is humidity.

The pressure of the building drama was every bit as intense as the heat as Steve Johnson topped off a record breaking two years with a second consecutive singles championship. The USC senior defeated Eric Quigley of Kentucky 6-4, 6-4. This on top of winning a fourth consecutive team championship defeating Virginia 4-2 in the finals. I told you in my last post that the quarterfinal victory of the USC women’s team was exciting, but the USC men went even further. They followed the next day with a victories over Duke and then UCLA, both 4-1. In the meantime, the UCLA women won their semifinal over USC 4-3. The UCLA women would end up losing the final to Florida 4-0. But the men’s team final was epic drama. Virginia won the doubles point and then the rains came. They were scheduled to go back on the outdoor courts in the evening, but it rained again and they started the singles matches well into the evening. USC picked up 1st, 2nd and 4th singles, but Virginia got their second point at 3rd and seemed to have the upper hand in the 5th and 6th singles matches. Three of the four players were foreign students who certainly had no idea what they had gotten themselves into when they accepted those scholarships to come to the US to get an education and play a little tennis. As the match went on past midnight, they appeared to be holding serve into the tie-breaker at 5th singles and at 6th singles the Virginia player, Julen Uriguen from Guatemala, was seeing his comfortable lead over Roberto Quiroz of Ecuador disintegrate as he dealt with a bad case of cramps. But in the meantime, USC’s Yannick Hanfmann had dropped his serve at 5-5 only to break right back against Justin Shane to force that inevitable tie-break. The tall German finally won the tie-break and the championship for USC 7-3. It was a night they will all certainly remember the rest of their lives.

The next day 5 of the USC men (as well as 4 of the Virginia players) had to get up and play the individual singles tournament and all but Hanfmann managed a victory. I was amazed by that effort. Steve Johnson managed to plow through the singles draw dropping just one set on his way to the championship. He has a lot of work to do to be successful on the pro level, but he has some big weapons going for him. For me, most of all, the maturity and poise to deal so well with the pressure of bringing home that 4th NCAA team championship as well maintaining a 72 match singles winning streak tells me he has the mental fortitude to be successful on the pro tour. So Congrats to the USC Tennis program and especially to coach Peter Smith on shepherding Steve and all of his teammates through that pressure cooker and achieving the “FourPeat”!

On the women’s side, Nicole Gibbs came back from a set down in the finals to defeat her Stanford teammate, Mallory Burdette 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4. In the women’s doubles, Burdette and Gibbs then combined to defeat Nadja Gilchrist and Chelsea Gullickson of Georgia 6-2, 6-4. Meanwhile, in men’s doubles, Chase Buchanan and Blaz Rola of Ohio State beat Raony Carvalho and Gonzalo Escobar of Texas Tech 7-6(4), 6-3.

I want to give a special shoutout to USC’s #3 player from my park, Sabrina Santamaria who earned Singles All-American honors by reaching the quarters of the singles. It’s nine years since I first had her in a couple of group classes at Griffith Park. You’ve come a long way, baby!

10sChiro

to see other articles by 10sChiro, go to

https://archive.10sballs.com/category/columnists/dr-chiro/

https://archive.10sballs.com/author/don/

If you want more information about lessons with TennisChiro or his videotaping and analysis service, contact him at donbrosseau@earthlink.net. This summer he will be the Head Pro at the Buckskill Tennis Club in Easthampton, NY. (buckskilltennis.com)

Topics: French Open, Paris, Roland Garros

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