Randy Walker

Sebastian Mendoza, the No. 1 player on Vero Beach High School’s state runner-up boys tennis team, defeated Jose Moreno of Tampa, Florida 6-2, 6-2 to win the $500 Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) “On This Day In Tennis History” Book Open at The Boulevard tennis club.

Mendoza earned the first prize of $325 with the win while Moreno, who just finished his freshman year at Division II St. Leo University, earned $175. Among those in the crowd watching the final were former world No. 1-ranked senior player King van Nostrand, Tom Fish, the father of U.S. Davis Cup captain Mardy Fish, former Mexican Davis Cupper Danny Garza and former French Open singles runner-up Mikael Pernfors, whose 16-year-old son Figge also competed in the event.

The tournament was created by Randy Walker, the co-tournament director of the $15,000 Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships ITF World Tennis Tour event and also the author of the book “On This Day In Tennis History.” The event was run to give local players an opportunity to compete, earn money and become familiar and get a ranking on the Universal Tennis Rating system, which is similar to a golf handicap in golf.

Figge Pernfors earned his first UTR rating – a 9.6 – by virtue of playing the event and reaching the semifinals.

For the complete draws for the event click here: https://app.universaltennis.com/events/53979?d=afb41410-7565-4e6a-b699-c35ab622dc90&r=0&t=3

There is Arthur Ashe Stadium, Rod Laver Arena, but how about Mardy Fish Court?

It may happen in Vero Beach, Florida, the hometown of the U.S. Davis Cup captain and 2004 Olympic silver medalist Mardy Fish.

The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, the charitable organization founded by Fish in 2007, has been in discussions with the City of Vero Beach and the U.S. Tennis Association about refurbishing the town’s Riverside Tennis Complex in its harbor-side location on its central beach island area into a new state-of-the-art tennis complex that would rival many of the nation’s top tennis facilities. The facility would serve as a hub not only for all the local resident tennis players but also for many Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation funded youth programs, as well as junior and adult tournaments, special population programming such as Special Olympics, Wheelchair Tennis, Love Serving Autism as well a potential professional events on an intimate Mardy Fish Court. The Mardy Fish Court would be a beautifully landscaped natural Amphitheatre that would be located on the exact court where a young Fish first learned to play tennis with his father Tom and first dreamed of one day playing at the U.S. Open and Wimbledon.

“Riverside Park is where it all started for Mardy and him starting to love the game of tennis, hitting balls with me on that court in the northeast corner of the facility,” said Tom Fish, Mardy’s father and the President Emeritus of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation. “We look forward to hosting many young people in Vero Beach to Riverside Park where they can be inspired by the dreams and successes of Mardy and realize their own hopes and dreams while able to gain important exercise in a safe and healthy environment.”

The USTA worked with the Fish Foundation with a site plan, rendering and business plans for the facility’s operation. It also promised to help fund the project via special grants, but also via special presentation to mega donors during the U.S. Open. However, progress on the project went on a standstill with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the USTA’s finances taking a major hit with a fan-less U.S. Open last year, significantly cutting into its revenue that is used to annually fun tennis in the United States, including projects such as this effort for the Fish Foundation. However, as the country starts to slowly emerge from the pandemic, the Foundation has started to revamp its efforts, including fundraising, to revitalize the facility and increase programming.

“We also see this as being a beatification project,” said Lynn Southerly, executive director of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation. “Improving the courts and surrounding buildings and land would make it as pleasant to look at as our art museum and the Riverside Theatre. It would enhance the couple block area of our charming sea-side town for all our residents to enjoy. A beautiful-looking tennis facility would be a real feather in the cap for our Vero Beach community.  A facility of this stature improves our ability to serve our youth and community at large, gives us a place to hold income generating events that would benefit all our residents and local business owners and honor Mardy Fish, one of our great homegrown heroes and role models.”

The Riverside Tennis Complex is also the hub of the newly-created Treasure Coast Tennis Association, founded by former Baylor University women’s tennis coach Tim Palmer. The TCTA in conjunction with the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation completed a wildly-successful free program for Vero Beach children called “Whack-It Wednesday” in the fall of 2020, introducing kids to the sports of tennis and providing them important recreation and exercise. The holiday surge in COVID-19 cases prevented the program from immediately continuing in early 2021, but the program will return this summer. Palmer also has had deep discussions with the USTA Florida office in Orlando about bringing Love Serving Autism and Wheelchair Tennis programming to Riverside Park starting this summer.

Randy Walker, the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation’s tournament director for its annual USTA pro circuit event, plans to start to hosting competitive tournaments for juniors and pros this summer and believes that a refurbished hard court facility would be able to host pro tournament, exhibitions and practice and training events for top pros, especially since Florida’s two biggest pro events, the ATP Tour’s Delray Beach Open and the ATP and WTA Tour’s Miami Open, are both played on hard courts. Current top pros Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia and Alexander Zverev of Germany have both recently considered hard-court training in Vero Beach.

The annual Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships ITF World Tennis Tour event brings in an estimated $500,000 in economic impact annually into the Vero Beach community.

Vero Beach is regarded as one of the most enthusiastic tennis communities in the country. It is also the home of Hall of Fame legend Ivan Lendl and former French Open runner-up and top 10 star Mikael Pernfors.

Riverside Park is also the home of the boys and girls tennis teams at St. Edwards School. Walker has made inquiries already received initial interest from a few college programs about playing special dual matches at Riverside Park on the six courts on the west side of the footprint.

The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation has announced that the 2021 edition of its annual Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships pro tennis tournament will be held October 18-24 at The Boulevard tennis club.

The popular annual tournament, Vero Beach’s leading international sporting event, will once again be held in October, rather than its traditional April date, due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. It will be a $15,000 tournament on the ITF World Tennis Tour as part of the U.S. Tennis Associations Pro Circuit, where players will compete for ATP ranking points. The 2020 event was postponed from April to October and was held as a $10,000 prize money event on the Universal Tennis Rating platform.

”The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships is the leading fundraiser for our foundation and we felt that hosting it again in October would be more advantageous to us financially and logistically in this rapidly fluid COVID-19 environment,” said Tom Fish, President Emeritus of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation and the co-tournament director for the event.

“We are very thankful to the U.S. Tennis Association, International Tennis Federation and The Boulevard for their flexibility in accommodating us with this schedule change. We were very pleased how our event went last October to kick off the season in Florida. We look forward to once again hosting so many up-and-coming talented young tennis pros from around the world in Vero Beach and, of course, raising more money to benefit at-risk children in Indian River County.”

Those interested in sponsorships and cabana and box seats for the event can contact Lynn Southerly, Executive Director of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, at LSouth1072@gmail.com or 202-438-5225.

Last October, Diego Hidalgo, a member of Ecuador’s Davis Cup team, won the singles title defeating Matthew Segura, the great nephew of Hall of Fame tennis star Pancho Segura, 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 and most recently new top 10 start Denis Shapovalov, who played in Vero Beach in 2016. Former Vero Beach competitors have combined to win 19 titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles at Grand Slam tournaments. Eight former Vero Beach players have gone on to play Davis Cup for the United States – Roddick, Fish, Taylor Dent, Jared Palmer, Donald Young, Ryan Harrison, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul.

The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships is 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 organization named for Vero Beach native son Mardy Fish, former top 10 tennis star and current U.S. Davis Cup caption, benefits at risk children in Indian River County.    

Founded in 2007, the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation (www.MardyFishChildrensFoundation.org and @MardyFishFound on Twitter) currently supports over 2,400  children in 15 elementary schools, six middle schools,  and several other community organizations in Indian River County, Florida by funding after-school exercise, nutritional and enrichment programs in a safe environment to prepare them for healthy, productive and successful lives. The Foundation introduced the “Six Healthy Habits” in 2012 which are Get Sleep; Drink Water; Exercise Daily, Eat Healthy; Brush and Floss; Make Friends.

Inarguably, the two greatest tennis players from tiny Ecuador are Andres Gomez and Pancho Segura.

Gomez won his only Grand Slam at the 1990 French Open beating Andre Agassi in the final, but he also won 21 ATP singles titles and was ranked as high as No. 4 in the world in 1990. The other was Pancho Segura, who was ranked No. 1 from 1950-52, won 66 titles, including the U.S. Pro Championships three times.

Incredibly, on a rainy Sunday at the $10,000 Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships, the singles final came down to top-seeded Diego Hidalgo and seventh-seeded Matthew Segura — both with Ecuadorian roots — at The Boulevard in Vero Beach.

Hidalgo, 27, was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador as was Pancho Segura, while Matthew Segura, Pancho’s great nephew, is a native of Los Angeles, living in the Orlando-Apopka area.

In the end the veteran Hidalgo, ranked No. 366 in the ATP World Tour rankings, had too much experience and too much firepower for the unranked 20-year-old Segura as he cruised to a 6-3, 6-2 victory and the $3,000 payday.

”I’m very happy to have won, to come back  because last year was tough losing in the semifinal (when I had a match point),” said Hidalgo, who has won double-figure doubles tournaments on the ATP Challenger Tour and ITF circuit. “I want to thank everyone for putting on this tournament with so much happening in the world. I hope to build on this from here and get better.”

Hidalgo, who like Segura features a one-handed, lefty forehand and a two-handed backhand, although Segura, who’s ambidextrous, really has two forehands, similar to his great uncle’s legendary two-hand forehead. 

“It was a great week even though it didn’t go my way today,” said Segura, who has won the last three Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation “wild card” events at Sea Oaks tennis club but this is his first trip past the first round of the main event. “I know this won’t be my last [final and $1,500 payday], God willing. I know my great uncle is saying ‘Attaboy,’ and is still proud of me and loves me.”

Hidalgo, a former All-American singles and doubles player at University of Florida, said playing a Segura served as extra motivation.

“Growing up in Ecuador Pancho was the biggest name in tennis,” said Hidalgo, who’s based in Barcelona. “When I found out I was playing a Segura it was a big inspiration and motivation and more because my coach Colon Nunez knew Pancho.”

In the rain-delayed doubles final that preceded the singles final, the veteran top-seeded duo of Colombian Alejandro Gomez and American Junior Ore, dominated the teenage due of Jack Anthrop and Benjamin Kittay 6-1, 6-1.

Kittay, who’s from Potomac, Maryland, won the 2019 USTA National 16s doubles championship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while Anthrop, 16, also reached the singles semifinals this week only to lose to Segura, despite being up a set and 3-0.

The young American pair had a thrilling semifinal victory over the second-seeded duo of Ricardo Rodriguez – the all-time winningest Davis Cup player from Venezuela – and Ignacio Martinez of Weston, when they pulled out the third-set super tiebreak 12-10 late Saturday. After match point the teenage pals repeatedly gave it the old Bryan Brothers’ chest bump.

Ore also won the Mardy Fish doubles title in 2018, winning with Miles Seeman and is the second player to be a two-time winner, along with David Witt, the long-time coach of tennis great Venus Williams.

“We’ve been practicing for two months so I know where he’s going, where he’s moving so that makes it easier for us,’’ said Ore, 28, who lives in Miami and played for Texas A&M. “We’ve been playing together for almost two years and I don’t know how many titles we’ve won together.’’

In 2019, Gomez, ranked No. 261 in doubles in the world, and Ore, ranked No. 285, won International Tennis Federation doubles titles at Malibu, California, three in Spain, France, Pensacola and Palm Coast. The pair split the $1,500 prize money at this Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) pro event.

“I love playing here, obviously, I have some great memories,’’ said Ore, who played for Texas A&M. “This environment is great, and it’s great to be a part of Mardy Fish tournament history.’’