Tennis Topics
Published: May 25 2009, Richmond Tennis Association website
Sullivan wins two Davenport junior titles, passes endurance test
by John Packett, RTA Staff Writer
It took Liam Sullivan a while to get into the swing of things in the family tradition of playing tennis.
But the 14-year-old has certainly made rapid progress since he entered the competitive arena less than a year ago.
Sullivan, an eighth-grader at Robious Middle School, took home a pair of trophies today as the Davenport City Junior Tennis Championships completed a three-day run at Byrd Park.
In the boys 14-under singles final, the top-seeded Sullivan outlasted No. 2 seed Thomas Rishcoff 4-6, 7-6 (8-6), 10-6. A half-hour later, Sullivan returned to the court and defeated third-seeded Owen Devalk 6-2, 4-6, 10-4 for the 16-under title.
Sullivan, who was unseeded in the boys 16 draw, had upset top-seeded Jayanth Shekhar in the semifinals on Sunday, when he had played four matches for a total of 63 games.
Not bad for someone who had previously spent most of his free time swimming and running cross country, while also dabbling in soccer and baseball.
But his family, including mother, Laura, and grandmother, Peggy, played tennis, so they got him interested in their sport.
"They pretty much pulled me into it," said Sullivan, who will enter James River High School in the fall.
"Tennis is a little bit more fun. Different things happen in every match. You have to adjust in how you play, based on who you’re playing. With swimming, you just have to go out there and get your time. You don’t have to change it up at all."
According to Laura Sullivan, "Somebody asked Liam to play on a rec league tennis team last summer. I told him, ‘Go up in the attic and get your racquet. It’s up there somewhere.’ He hadn’t played in five years. He played a couple weeks and liked it.
"He found out about the Tennis 4 Life camp [at Courtside West] and went to that and loved it."
Liam Sullivan admitted he was worn out from the matches on Sunday, but "figured I may as well just come out and do the best I could. If I got tired, I’d keep trying. I got pretty tired but on every switch [changeover], I’d take my time and get long sips of water."
Rishcoff tried to get everything back and frustrated Sullivan at times, causing him to make mistakes. Sullivan hit enough winners, though, to come back and win the second set, blowing a 6-2 lead in the tiebreaker before holding on to force a 10-point tiebreaker to decide the match.
"He’s a really good player," said Sullivan. "He made me hit a winner every point, just to win the point. The points were really long, but I tried to shorten up the points so I wouldn’t be as tired. A lot of times, on his second serve, I’d step in and try to hit a winner."
In the third-set tiebreaker, Sullivan bolted to a 7-2 lead and managed to hang on to close it out.
It took Sullivan three hours to finally subdue Rishcoff and another two hours to dispose of Devalk.
"He’s a natural talent and he’s been a very quick learner," said Jamie Morgan, an assistant women’s coach at the University of Richmond who works in the Tennis 4 Life program. "His strokes are way more advanced than his feet are right now, but that’s something you learn over time.
"He’s one of the hardest workers in the class. He definitely leaves that class sweating every day and that’s a good thing."
Meanwhile, top-seeded Bryce DePew continued another family tradition by blanking No. 2 Carter Key in the boys 12 final 6-0, 6-0.
Thirty-eight years ago, Bryce’s father, John DePew, had won the boys 12 title over Randy Carl.
"You think back all those years ago, it’s kind of a neat thing," said the elder DePew. "The facility really hasn’t changed. Jesse Dark used to come up with his truck [selling soft drinks and sandwiches] back then. But everything else is the same.
"It’s nice that Bryce really loves tennis. He works hard at it, and I’m glad he has something he enjoys and works on."
DePew, 11, didn’t have much trouble dealing with Key, as he was much steadier on his ground strokes.
"I was trying to keep every ball to his backhand until he gave me a short ball I could put away," said the younger DePew. "But then he decided to start hitting it higher, so I tried to take it a little bit on the rise and keep it to his backhand still. My serve was really on today and I felt pretty good."
There were three more finals in the girls divisions and all of them were decided in straight sets.
Two unseeded players toppled No. 1 seeds. In the girls 12-under division, Alissa Rosen defeated top-seeded Lilly Ellick 7-5, 6-1, and Jessica Kocen upset top-seeded Haley Moses in the girls 16-under category 6-4, 6-2.
Top-seeded Lindsay Brown claimed the girls 14-under division with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over unseeded Caroline Jones.