By John Huston
The first junior player since Grigor Dimitrov to win the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl back to back, Sam Riffice got his start on the courts of Spare Time’s Johnson Ranch Racquet Club in Roseville, where his mom Lori has been a pro for 22 years. Lori Riffice knew she “wanted to be a mother and have fun on the tennis court” with her son, so she reached out to another Spare Time pro, Amine Khaldi of Gold River Racquet Club, for assistance in developing Sam’s game. “Amine is a hard worker, he’s younger, and I knew he could push Sam,” says Lori. “We’ve worked well together from the beginning. It was great teamwork.”
Teamwork is a key word for Khaldi, too, whose enthusiasm for Sam and his game is clear. “Sam is a great player,” he says. “It’s all about passion, and he has a spark. He loves the game. We’d work on technique, and Lori helped him work on repetition.” Lori Riffice agrees: “On the court, I wasn’t always coaching. I wanted Sam to figure [things] out and see what Amine wanted him to learn. In the long term, Sam is on his own out there on the tennis court.”
It’s exactly that sense of independence and self-reliance that drew Sam Riffice to tennis. “I played several sports, like basketball, baseball, football and soccer,” he says. “I loved tennis the most because it’s an individual sport, and only I was out there playing. No one could tell me what to do while I was [competing]. And my mom was my [first] coach, so it was really fun playing tennis with her almost every day.”
A trip to the fan-friendly BNP Paribas Open with Khaldi at the age of 12 was one key moment in Riffice’s early development. “The trip with Amine to Indian Wells was really inspirational,” says Sam. “I got to see all of my favorite players up close and even got to meet [Roger] Federer.” Khaldi points out what Sam absorbed from the experience: “Sam saw the hard work the pros do. He came back from Indian Wells knowing, ‘I want to work even harder.'”
At 13, in addition to working with Khaldi at Gold River, Riffice also began training with the USTA in Boca Raton. “The benefit of coming to Boca Raton is that Sam has full-time training,” explains Lori. “The national coach [Sylvain Guichard] worked with me and Amine about the structure … The USTA is doing a great job with the upcoming juniors. They really have their best interests in mind. We’ve been included in all the decisions. We feel very lucky that the opportunity has been given to us.”
Late last year, Riffice scored ITF title wins in Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina. “Sam’s success last fall is a continuation of what he’s been working on,” says Lori. “He’s taking them to a higher level. The ITFs play a big role in giving him broader perspective on where his game needs to be.” Reached while competing in Ecuador and Peru, Sam points out another valuable aspect: “The ITFs I won in the fall gave me a lot of confidence going into Eddie Herr and the Orange Bowl. I was really happy with my game.”
Lori Riffice was on hand to support Sam throughout his back-to-back wins at Eddie Herr and the Orange Bowl. “On the three-hour drive [between the tournaments] I made him do schoolwork on his laptop,” she notes. The transition from Eddie Herr’s hard courts to the Orange Bowl’s clay required some problem-solving. “Sam’s first-round opponent at the Orange Bowl was a young man from Mexico that he’d played at Eddie Herr,” says Lori. “He’d beaten him 1 and 0 at Eddie Herr, but at the Orange Bowl, he dropped the first set 6-0.”
Riffice quickly found his footing and turned things around, losing only one game in the next two sets. “It was a very exciting week,” Lori says. “Sam played his best tennis at the Orange Bowl.” Though Riffice won most matches in straight sets, he names a come-from-behind battle as the highlight of his young career. “My favorite match is the one in the Orange Bowl finals, where I beat Matias Siimar 7-5 in the third,” he says.
While the Orange Bowl and Eddie Herr wins are standout accomplishments, both Riffices and Khaldi continue to look forward and strive for improvement. From Spare Time clubs in the Sacramento Valley, to the USTA Training Center in Boca Raton, on through to competing at international events, Sam Riffice is learning along the way. “Sam is always focused on his fitness and schoolwork, and what he wants his next move to be,” says Khaldi. “He has something special.”
