By Harvey Fialkov
Tennisverobeach.com
VERO BEACH – Garrett Johns is the highest seed remaining in the draw of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation $15,000 USTA/ITF Pro Circuit tournament, and he more than lived up to it in his quarterfinal victory on a sun-splashed, breezy Friday afternoon on the clay courts of Timber Ridge.
Displaying a dazzling array of shot-making, Johns, the 23-year-old second seed, combined a powerful serve and groundstrokes with deft lobs, volleys and drop shots en route to a 6-4, 6-4 victory over speedy Rudy Quan, an 18-year-old wild card entrant from Sacramento who will attend UCLA in the Fall.
Johns will meet close friend Will Grant, the fifth seed and his current housemate in Vero Beach, in one semifinal Saturday afternoon at Timber Ridge after the former member of the University of Florida National Championship team of 2021, downed wild card Chad Kissell 5-7, 6-2 6-4 in a slugfest early Friday evening.
In another quarterfinal Miles Jones, 23, of Marina del Rey, Calif., reached his first pro semifinal after vanquishing Bulgarian 23-year-old qualifier Dian Nedev 6-3, 6-1. Making it a clean sweep with four Americans in the semis, third-seeded Victor Lilov, 20, who recently moved to Delray Beach, dispatched Frenchman Etienne Donnet, 23, the eighth-seed, 6-1, 6-3. Donnet, who’s winding down his collegiate career with the University of Louisville, was clearly hobbled by a blister.
Kissell, 27, an assistant coach for the Wichita State men’s tennis team after a solid career playing for Valparaiso (Ind.) University, came out of retirement this week, and after dropping his last six first-round matches last year, was one break point from serving for the match and his fourth pro semifinal.
However, Grant, 23, who features a powerful inside-out forehand, came up with a sensational drop volley to save a break point at 3-4, 15-40 of the third set, and followed that with a timely serve-and-volley winner on the next one.
Grant, who played doubles during the Gators’ championship run while world No. 15 Ben Shelton starred in singles, finally held for 4-4 and then broke the 6-foot-3 Latrobe, Pa., native’s serve with a pinpoint backhand down the line to go up 5-4. He faced two break points while serving for the match but prevailed with an ace before inducing an errant backhand from Kissell. He battled through a cut hand, fatigue and cramps.
Johns took a year off from his senior year at Duke to compete on the ITF Pro Circuit last year and won three $15,000 singles titles and four $25,000 doubles titles. His doubles’ prowess came in handy on several forays to the net.
“In college I started to play more doubles because it’s important so you’re starting to get a lot more touch shots, so I feel like I’m starting to use it more in singles,’’ said the 481-ranked Johns, an Atlanta native who’s relocating to Boca Raton. “[Quan] was definitely making me play a lot of extra balls. Maybe I was going for a little too much, so it got in my head. But I recovered pretty quick for the next game.”
Johns won 71 percent of his blistering first serves compared to just 54 percent for his the 5-foot-8 Quan. The fifth-year Duke All-American also converted 5-of-10 break points versus just 3-of-6 for Quan. The two exchanged five consecutive breaks in the second set, but Johns got the decisive one to go up 4-3. He finished off the match with a drop shot that Quan smacked into the net.
“He has very good anticipation,’’ Quan said. “He got to a lot of balls I hit at him. Definitely, on my end I could’ve done a little better, but he was very steady today and served very well. I have to keep chipping away. I hope to win this tournament one day.”
Johns, who has yet to drop a set, says he holds bragging rights as he beat Grant in a collegiate doubles match. The two have been practicing together all week.
“I beat him in a 10-point tiebreaker, so I got his number right now,’’ smiled Johns. “I’ll have to use my forehand when I can, hit heavy, which I did today, and try not to stand too far back. Will has a good serve and forehand and is pretty solid on both sides.”
Jones the surprise of tournament
If a detective googled Alex and Miles Jones, he wouldn’t find much – until this week. Miles, the younger brother at 23, is in the semifinals of singles and the finals of doubles after the unseeded siblings eked out a 6-3, 3-6, (10-7) victory over fellow Californians Meecah Bigun and Mitchell Lee, who will play for Harvard in the Fall.
Alex, 25, qualified for the event, but went out in a first-round match, but Miles, ranked 1212, after missing most of the last two years with two wrist surgeries on his dominant right hand, is healthy again.
Once ranked No. 1 in the 14s’ division of Southern California and top 30 in the 16s, Jones and his brother didn’t opt for college, a path their father/coach Dale Jones took at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“I had to tweak my forehand, but I pattern my one-handed backhand after Nicolas Almagro, who I worked with in Spain,’’ Jones said. Almagro, now 38, was ranked 9th in 2011 and has won 13 singles titles, all on clay.
Miles would love to face his big brother, who he has beaten twice in either qualifying or main-draw matches of ITF pro tournaments, including last month in a round-of-32 victory in a $25K in the Dominican Republic.
Instead, he will face third-seeded Lilov, who plays for America and resembles Roger Federer, but also has citizenships in Canada, where he was born, and Bulgaria, the native homeland of his parents.
“I hit with Miles once before, and he can really rip that backhand pretty big,’’ said Lilov, who has won one pro title, a $15K in Peru in 2022, also on clay. “I saw [Donnet] limping before the match. Sometimes you’re tight before a match but I took care of my service games. I could’ve finished him on some points, but I kept moving him around.”
In the other doubles semifinal, two American teens Cooper Woestendick of Olathe, Kan., and Alexander Razeghi of Humble, Texas, upset the third-seeded tandem of Miguel Angel Cabrera of Chile and Ivan Marrero Curbelo of Spain, 6-3, 6-2. Razeghi will play for Stanford next Fall.
Leave a Reply