5th Annual Shotgun 21 Event – Pacific Palisades, CA!

Written by: Staff on 22nd July 2012

5th Annual Shotgun 21 Event - Pacific Palisades, CA! |

One of the most entertaining and intense tennis tournaments, Shotgun 21 is a drop-hit baseline game tournament that features current pros, ex-pros, collegiate players, juniors, and any number of wannabes and club players. The best match of day featured a semifinal encounter between Prakash Armitraj and Robert Yim who have been playing each other in tournaments for 18 years. Both players went toe to toe with long rallies and superb shotmaking. In the other semifinal, Clay Thompson, who lost earlier in the day in Farmers Classic qualifying to Ricardas Berankis, beat Zack Fleishman (formerly #127 in the world).

In the final match between Thompson and Yim, Yim broke a string at 17-12 and had to continue playing with a completely different racket. Fighting fatigue and trying to find his range with the new racket, Yim managed to hold on for a 21-17 victory for his first Shotgun 21 title. Almost 100 matches were played today in 6 hours and 30 minutes and there was not one dispute about line calls.

Tournament director Steve Bellamy had this to say about the day’s event: “It always amazes me how high the quality of tennis is when you take out the serve. It’s so great to see the facility light up with so much talent from all over the world. It’s really fun seeing strong girls push guys to their limit. Seeing different generations play each other with no serve really allows the true artistry of tennis to decide who wins and loses. We hope to be shotgun 21s for many many years.

UCLA Men’s head coach Billy Martin also gave us his take on Shotgun 21: “This is only my second year coming, but I really love it. Watching my guys play, I think its a really fun event. Taking the serve out of it, to me, really makes it interesting. There aren’t as many cheap points won. Steve (Bellamy) does a great job putting this together, its an interesting event and there’s certainly no other event around like it. Plus, putting the young kids in with older guys, and the girls makes it great too.”

Champion Robert Yim “Clay made me work for it. I am exhausted but good, it’s a good tired. I like Shotgun 21 a lot and I’m definitely coming back next year.”