Tennis: It’s all California in the semifinals

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - Welcome to Hotel California, boys high school

tennis style.

After two stunning upsets and the top two seeds, Peninsula and Corona del

Mar, breezing in the first two rounds Friday, it will be all California

in the championship semifinals of the CdM/Pavilions National High School

Team Invitational at the Palisades Tennis Club.

“That’s not a surprise,” said Tom Cox, coach of No. 1-seeded Peninsula, a

school ranked nationally the last three seasons.

“I thought that Florida school (fourth-seeded Dr. Michael Krop of Miami)

might hang in there a little from what I heard last year. But they must

be down a lot.”

In the first round, Krop didn’t win a set against Brentwood, the

defending CIF Southern Section Division V champion, a school of 650

students.

But after Brentwood upset Krop, 9-0, it lost to Harvard-Westlake in the

second round, 5-4.

“We want revenge,” said Harvard-Westlake Coach Keith Huyssoon, whose team

lost to Peninsula, 10-8, in a nonleague match earlier this season at the

Jack Kramer Tennis Club.

Peninsula and Harvard-Westlake square off today at 1 p.m. at the

Palisades Club, while No. 2-seeded CdM plays Menlo (Atherton) in other

semifinal match at the same time and location. The championship final is

slated for tonight at 6.

“It’ll be interesting (today),” Cox said. “This is a different format

(with eight-game pro sets, similar to colleges). But it should be fun,

and it looks like we have some good weather coming.”

Cox also quipped: “I don’t think Harvard-Westlake was properly seeded.”

On the other side of the bracket, CdM defeated Woodberry Forest of

Virginia and Beverly Hills, but third-seeded Cherry Creek of Colorado was

upset in the first round by Centennial of Bakersfield, 5-4.

Cherry Creek led after singles, 4-2, and held triple match point and an

8-7 advantage in the final doubles set. But Centennial fought off the

deficit and won all three doubles sets, all of which went into a

tiebreaker.

“That must have been the match of the day,” said Mang, executive director

of the Pavilions National.

Centennial, however, didn’t have enough steam left when it faced Menlo in

the second round at the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club.

“You just can’t win two in a row like that,” Mang said. “You beat a

seeded team, and it’s, ‘OK, let’s go play Menlo now.’ But then, whoops,

Menlo’s ahead of us.”

Menlo, led by James Pade and Preston Walters in doubles Friday, edged

Brophy College Prep (Phoenix, Ariz.) and Centennial by one set each.

“It’s quite a thrill (to be in the semifinals),” Menlo Coach Bill Shine

said. “I know (playing Corona del Mar in the semifinals) is a huge task

ahead of us, but (my players are) looking forward to it. Oh, yeah (we

want CdM). This is what coaching’s all about.

“We just want to thank Tim Mang for putting this on. It’s really nice of

him, and it’s about time for something like this to go on.”

While Krop probably should not have been seeded, Cherry Creek entered the

Pavilions National with lots of ammunition, including Colorado state

championships 26 of the last 27 years, and a dual-match winning streak of

323, dating back to 1970.

But Cherry Creek’s boys tennis season is held in the fall (not the

spring, like California schools), and most of its players are currently

playing other sports and hadn’t picked up a tennis racket in several

weeks.

Five of the top 20 teams in the nation, according to the USA Today’s

final 1999 rankings, are entered in the Pavilions National, including the

host Sea Kings (No. 2) and Peninsula (No. 5).

“The word was out that Cherry Creek was the team to beat, because it has

three nationally ranked players (Chad Harris, Gregg Alpert and Beau

Berglund),” Mang said. “Everybody was watching them hit at the Wilson

Fest (Thursday night during opening ceremonies) and they were just

drilling the ball. Everybody thought they were the ones to beat.

“You know they have good players, but you don’t know the depth. This

tournament was a major deal to them. They wanted to win badly.”

Mang said the difference for his team is that it often plays a tough

nonleague schedule and competes in the largest CIF division.