Players Keep Choosing Laurel Springs
The same weekend that Newport Beach’s Alexa Glatch was the hero for the U.S. Fed Cup team dominating in singles play against the Czech Republic, Calabasas’ Amanda Fink was enjoying equal success against the powerful Pac-10, winning the singles and doubles at the 109th annual Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament.
Both Glatch and Fink are former Laurel Springs students, and both speak glowingly of the accredited Ojai college prep private school offering distance learning programs and teacher services for students grades K-12. Players who want to spend more time traveling to national and international tournaments and spending their days working on their game are choosing the school. “I wouldn’t have been able to make jump and turn pro at the age of 15 if it wasn’t for Laurel Springs,” said Glatch.
After leading her USC team to the team conference championship over UCLA, Fink ended her final season as the best in the Pac-10 in both singles and doubles. Even Dennark’s Caroline Wozniaki, an up and coming WTA star, attended the school. Just as important as the headline-grabbing performances by big names like Glatch and Fink, Laurel Springs recently announced that more than 40 graduates of its program are attending universities of their choice on tennis scholarships. Most notably among them is Texas A&M star Austin Krajicek, the USTA National Boys’ 18s winner last year. Kellen Damico, Gail Brodsky, Joradan Cox, Asia Muhammed and Julia Cohen are just a few other recognizable names who have all been enrolled at Laurel Springs.
At the recent Easter Bowl, two other Laurel Springs students, Chicago’s Evan King and Christina McHale of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., were the big winners as they both captured respective boys and girls’ 18s ITF titles with convincing straight-set wins.
Laurel Springs founder and CEO Marilyn Mosley and marketing director Amber Walker were on hand at the Easter Bowl checking in with players and watching their matches as Laurel Springs was again a major sponsor of the event.
An incredible 78 players entered in the Easter Bowl are currently enrolled as Laurel Springs students. “
To learn more about Laurel Springs School, go to www.laurelsprings.com.
Rancho Las Palmas: Scenery and Service Winners
Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa has something for everyone – a two-acre water park, 27 holes of lush green fairways, a swanky 20,000-square-foot spa and a top notch restaurant – but tennis players think yellow balls and green and blue courts, this top notch desert facility has a perfect program for anyone.
Kevin Connolly and his welcoming staff at the Peter Burwash International (PBI) tennis center are more than accommodating. Connolly emphasizes match arranging, and resort guests, club members and players from the community are never found wanting at the 25 court facility, which boasts 22 hard courts and three clay courts. Eight of the courts are lit and the locale always seems to be buzzing with excitement.
The sunken showcase stadium court, which features standout play when the world class Easter Bowl comes to town every April, is a fitting location for top touring pros and those recreational players who want to show off their top stuff in front of their peers.
Adults are offered league play, clinics, lessons and round robins. Juniors are offered top-flight instruction from Connolly, a former player at the University of South Carolina and a longtime desert area pro for PBI, arguably the most recognized tennis facility management company in the business. The pro shop features stringing, grip repair, clothes, rackets and of course, loads of balls.
The resort itself, which is on Bob Hope Drive close to Highway 111 and right across the street from the famed “River” shopping area, is a terrific choice for families, couples and singles. It just underwent a $35 million makeover and features a kid’s favorite in Splashtopia, the water park that includes tempting slides and a lazy river. For resort info, call 866-423-1195 or visit rancholasplamas.com. For tennis info, call 760-862-4531
Fink, Klahn Star at Ojai
Like in so many years past, the annual Ojai Valley tournament had a hometown feel as Southern California once again dominated play. Fresh off her team’s big Pac-10 team championship over UCLA, USC’s lone senior turned out to be the hero at the 109th edition of the event played on the storied Libbey Park courts.
Calabasas’ Amanda Fink capped off her final season as a Trojan by winning the Pac-10 women’s individual singles title Sunday with a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Arizona freshman Natasha Marks. She wasn’t finished there. She then teamed with junior Gabriela Niculescu to defend their doubles championship, clinching USC’s first Anson S. Thacher Trophy for the best team performance during the four-day event.
Fink lost in the last two finals to Cal’s Suzi Fodor and UCLA’s Riza Zalameda. Fink and Niculescu recorded a 6-2, 7-6 (5) triumph over Arizona State sisters Laila and Nadia Abdala — winning the final four points of the tiebreaker to close out the match — to become the first USC pair to repeat as champions in Ojai since Dena Levy and Mary Norwood in 1985 and ‘86. Fink became the first USC female to capture Pac-10 singles and doubles titles in the same year.
Stanford freshman Bradley Klahn of Poway denied USC a second straight men’s singles champion, defeated Trojans freshman and former junior doubles partner Steve Johnson 7-6 (4), 6-4. Klahn teamed with Harvard-Westlake graduate and fellow freshman Ryan Thacher to defeat UCLA’s Eugen Brazdil and Michael Look 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (2) in the doubles championship, helping Stanford clinch the Thacher Cup for the best performance by a men’s team.
UCLA’s Carling Seguso won the women’s invitational singles title with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Cal’s Marian Ravelojaoan and teammates Maya Johansson and Anna-Viktoria Lind took the invitational doubles championship by defeating Stanford’s Isamarie Perez and Jennifer Yen 8-2.
USC’s Dennis Nguyen captured the men’s invitational crown with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Brazdil, but teammates Matt Kecki and Andrew Kells lost 8-6 to Stanford’s Greg Hirshman and Jeff Zeller in the invitational doubles final.
Lester Cook won the men’s open singles and doubles titles, defeating Cecil Mamiit and then teaming with Shane LaPorte to beat Mamiit and Colt Gaston.
UCLA-bound Pamela Montez, a La Quinta High product, defeated USC graduate Maureen Diaz for the second year in a row in the women’s Open final, this time by a 4-6, 7-6 (3), 6-2 margin..
Quartz Hill graduate Ashley Litchfield, competing for Ventura College, captured the women’s community college singles title with a 5-7, 7-6 (6), 6-1 victory over De Anza College’s Priya Prasad.
In the boys’ CIF, Marcos Giron joined former Thousand Oaks High standouts Phil Sheng (2000), Sam Querrey (2004) and Kyle McMorrow (2008) as the winner of the high school singles division. Giron beat top-seeded Clay Thompson 6-3, 6-3, in the final, giving the Lancers back-to-back CIF champions for the first time in school history.
BNP Paribas Open Achieves Milestones
The 2009 BNP Paribas Open once again reached new milestones in attendance, website traffic, TV viewership, volunteer participation and celebrity fans.
For the third year in a row, the BNP Paribas Open set an overall attendance record with a final total of 332,498. While attendance records were being set, the traffic at www.bnpparibasopen.org, was even greater, attracting almost two million unique visitors, an increase of 54% from 2008. A number of people also turned to the Tennis Channel, which provided in excess of 22 hours of coverage over the first weekend of the event, and to Fox Sports Net (FSN), which saw an increase in audience for the men’s and women’s finals of more than 10 percent from 2008. Next year’s event is scheduled for March 8-21.
USTA $50,000 Carson Challenger May 25-31
Vince Spadea, Kim Kim, Sam Warburg, and Alex Bogomolov Jr. — all ranked in the Top 200 in the world – will vie for the $7,200 first-place price money at the Carson men’s and women’s USTA Pro Challenger May 25-31 to be played at the Home Depot Center.
Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium, who just won the WTA event in Estoril, is likely be the top-seeded woman for John Lansville’s event.
Amer Delic won last year’s Carson Challenger on the men’s side by beating Bogomolov while Mashona Washington came all the way through qualifying to beat Alexa Glatch to take home the top prize on the women’s side.
Other top women’s players competing include American’s Lauren Albanese and Lindsay Lee-Waters. The tournament, a partnership effort between the SCTA, AEG and the USTA, begins with qualifying May 22-24. The women’s first-round match will take place Monday the 25th and the men’s match Tuesday the 26th. There will be a Kid’s Day on Saturday, May 30, from 9 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
Gorin’ to the Top
Shamil Tarpischev has been the face of Russian tennis since ‘73. That’s one heck of a run. We’re talking Leonid Brezhnev and the Soyuz spacecraft here. In that time, the head of Russian tennis has been on the bench for more than 100 Davis and Fed Cup ties, and is one of three men to captain winning Davis and Fed Cup teams. He’s also built up the kind of respect other captains can only dream of. “He’s done a lot for tennis,” says Vitaly Gorin, a NorCal-based pro who has coached the likes of Dmitry Tursunov and Igor Kunitsyn.
Gorin, whose namesake Gorin Tennis Academy is located in Granite Bay, has been busy helping Kazakhstan kick-start its tennis for the last few years and now Gorin will serve as Tarpischev’s advisor. “I’m trying to find young Dmitry Tursunovs,” Gorin told IT from Moscow, “then hooking them up with coaches and academies.” As he works with Tarpischev — a man whom he calls “a phenomenal politician and an interesting philosopher” — Gorin hopes to attract more pro events to Russia.
