James Van Deinse of the Vero Beach Tennis Club and Michael Alford of the Quail Valley River Club, the winner and runner-up respectively at the annual “King of the Hill” tennis competition, have been awarded a main draw doubles wild card into the 2017 Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships, to be held April 21 – 30 at Grand Harbor in Vero Beach, Florida.
Van Deinse and Alford were awarded the wild card by the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, the operators of the Vero Beach $15,000 U.S. Tennis Association Pro Circuit “Futures” event, as part of an agreement with the 22-year “King of the Hill” (KOTH) competition and organizer Gigi Casapu to give a wild card entry into the Futures event to the KOTH winner and runner-up.
Van Deinse and Alford will play their first round doubles match on Tuesday, April 25 at 7 pm.
“We are happy to welcome James and Michael into our doubles field for the 2017 tournament and hope that their many Vero Beach fans come out to support two local residents as they compete against ATP-ranked professional players from around the world,” said Tom Fish, President of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation. “We are excited to have started a new tradition with our partnership with Gigi Casapu in awarding the ‘King of the Hill’ winner and runner-up a main draw doubles wild card into our event. We’d also like to start the tradition of having the ‘King of the Hill’ doubles team play on our opening main draw night session on Tuesdays, creating a ‘King of the Hill’ Tuesday night at the tournament.”
The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships is the USTA’s $15,000 Futures-level tournament played in Vero Beach since 1995 and regarded as one of the best entry-level professional tennis tournaments in the world. Proceeds from the event benefit the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, the non-profit tennis foundation benefiting children, named for Vero Beach native son Mardy Fish, the former top 10 tennis star and a U.S. Davis Cup standout.
“The King of Hill” is the annual doubles competition featuring tennis professionals from the Vero Beach area who compete in round-robin competitions on Tuesday nights to the determine the “king” of the local tennis professional. Proceeds from “King of the Hill” benefit the Youth Guidance Mentoring & Activities Program.
Many former KOTH champions and competitors have played in the Vero Beach USTA Futures, including four-time champion Robert Kowalczyk, the former USTA National Boy’s 18 Hard Court Champion, four-time champion Aldo Burga, now of The Legacy club, two-time champion Kriegler Brink, a singles semifinalist at the Vero Beach Futures in 2011, and 2016 KOTH champion Mike Alford, a former standout at the University of Florida, among others.
Advance tickets for the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships are available at www.VeroBeachTennisTickets.com. Season tickets for all 10 days of the competition are available for $100. Daily by-one-get-one free tickets for the qualifying rounds April 21-24 are for sale for $10, with daily tickets for the main draw sessions April 25-30 for sale for $20. A special $10 “Happy Hour” ticket is available for $10 after 5 pm for night sessions on Tuesday, April 25 – Friday, April 28 that includes a featured 7 pm night match. Admission for children 18 and under is free. Approximately 3,000 fans annually attend the event, which is seen as one of the best-attended events in the world on the “Futures” level of professional tennis tournaments. The 2016 event featured 13 players who played Davis Cup for their country and was won by Jonas Luetjen of Germany, who defeated Latvian Davis Cupper Martins Podzus in the final.
Some of the past competitors at the USTA Vero Beach Futures have gone on to succeed at the highest levels of professional tennis, winning major singles and doubles titles, Olympic medals and Davis Cup championships and earning No. 1 world rankings. Andy Roddick, the 2003 U.S. Open champion who attained the world No. 1 ranking and helped the United States win the Davis Cup in 2007, competed in Vero Beach in 1999. Thomas Johansson of Sweden, who reached the second round of the Vero Beach Futures in 1995, won the Australian Open seven years later in 2002. Nicolas Massu, the 1998 singles runner-up in Vero Beach, won the singles and doubles gold medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, beating Fish in the gold medal singles match. Kyle Edmund, the 2013 champion in Vero Beach, helped Great Britain to the Davis Cup title in 2015. Other notable former competitors in Vero Beach include former world No. 2 Magnus Norman, former world No. 4 Tim Henman, 2016 Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic among others. Former Vero Beach competitors have combined to win 19 titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles at Grand Slam tournaments. Six former Vero Beach players have gone on to play Davis Cup for the United States – Roddick, Fish, Taylor Dent, Jared Palmer, Donald Young and Ryan Harrison.
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