by Paul Teetor
Sean Ferguson was mad at himself.
And he didn’t try to hide his self-directed anger.
“I beat myself,” the 20-year-old Peninsula High School grad said moments after he lost a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) nailbiter to Nicolas Calixto in the Men’s Open Division Final of the Manhattan Beach Open.
The Sunday afternoon match, held at the center court of the Manhattan Beach Country Club, was the culmination of four days of tennis played by more than 240 players who entered the tournament in categories ranging all the way from 3.5 to the Open Division, where the best players can be found.
After losing a tough first set to the hard-hitting Calixto, Ferguson fought back by getting every ball back in the second set and daring Calixto to follow his shots up to the net. Ferguson hit enough passing shots over, around and through Calixto to earn himself a set point at 5-6 in the second set with Calixto serving.
He unleashed his usual topspin serve deep to Ferguson’s backhand and volleyed short to Ferguson’s forehand. Ferguson‘s passing shot hit the net and fell back, and so the opportunity to send the match to a third set was lost.
They struggled through four more deuces before Calixto, who plays for Utah collegiately, finally hit a service winner to send it to a tie-breaker.
Ferguson double-faulted twice in the tie-breaker and eventually lost it 7-4.
“Again, I beat myself with those two double faults in the breaker,” the 20-year-old Cal Poly student said as he took off his sneakers and plopped down in his courtside seat. “I was so close.”
For his part, Calixto knew he had been fortunate to dodge a third set.
“He was returning my serve well all day,” he said. “Who knows what would have happened if we played a third set.”
Fortunately, other locals stepped forward to represent the Beach Cities in the Manhattan Beach Open. Ella Kenney, a 12-year Manhattan Beach resident, won the women’s 4.0 division in singles — giving her three children – Neil, Hazel and Violet – the thrill of a lifetime.
“We never saw mom win a tournament before,” Hazel said. “We’re so proud.”
David Klein of Hermosa won the men’s 4.0 singles.
Calixto, for his part, said the $1500 was the biggest check he had ever won in a tennis tournament.
Harvard graduate (Class of ‘25), and pro player Megan McCray, of Oceanside, won the women’s Open Division.
Clippers getting older by the minute
If this were 2018, All Ball would have to say the Clippers are finally true contenders for an NBA championship.
But it’s not. It’s 2025 and so they’re closer to being pretenders than contenders.
The Clippers did it again this week: acquired another past-his-prime former three-time All Star to add to the roster that is already the oldest in the league with an average age of 28.
Bradley Beal, a 32-year-old shooting guard with 13 NBA seasons under his belt, reached a buyout of his $100 million contract with the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday and signed the next day with the Clippers as an unrestricted free agent who could have signed anywhere but chose LA.
He signed a Clippers contract for $11 million over two years – $5.5 million this season and next season – which amounts to chicken feed in the modern NBA.
Beal is still a quality player – he averaged 18 points a game with the Suns last season – to go along with four assists and four rebounds a game. He is one of the best shooters in the league and has a strong drive to the hoop to go along with it.
So how did the Clippers get so lucky?
It’s a long story, but one worth telling for what it says about the league and the flood of money that is pouring into it, mainly from lucrative media rights deals. It won’t be long now before someone like LeBron James or Jayson Tatum is making $100 million a year.
A few years ago, Beal was the best player on a very bad Washington Wizards team, who were desperate to keep him so the team would at least be respectable and have someone their fans wanted to see.
Beal had all the leverage when it came time for him to be a free agent, and so he forced the Wizards to give him a maximum contract at the time – more than $200 million over five years, with a no-trade clause thrown in for good measure.
That made two players in the entire NBA with no trade clauses in their contracts – Beal and LeBron James. Of course, Beal wasn’t close to the impact player that LeBron is, but he got it and thus had complete control over his destiny. In a league where players are traded like bubble-gum cards, that was a very valuable tool for him to have.
Despite his averaging 30 points one season for the Wizards, they continued to stink until they finally realized they needed a complete re-build – which meant getting rid of Beal, whose age and salary did not fit with their vision of a team of young, high draft picks getting better as they grew as players.
The Wizards attempted to trade him and his huge, above-market contract several times but the deals always fell through – either because Beal vetoed them or because the other team couldn’t swallow his crazy contract.
Finally, the Wizards got lucky two years ago when the Phoenix Suns were bought by Matt Ishbia, a newly-minted billionaire. Like a lot of new owners with no experience in pro sports, he came in looking to make a big splash and over-ruling his basketball people left and right.
In short order, he had mortgaged the Suns future in order to acquire Beal and Kevin Durant. The idea was to team them up with the Suns one All Star player – shooting guard Devin Booker – for a new Big Three that would win the western conference and then the entire NBA.
So naturally the Suns got swept in the first-round last year and didn’t even make the playoffs this year. Even worse, they were paying their Big Three so much money that they didn’t have any flexibility to sign young players.
Their solution: trade Durant to Houston for a bunch of draft picks, and buy out Beal’s contract by agreeing to pay him $20 million a year for the next five years.
But at least his huge contract was off their books and now they have money to sign draft picks and promising young players.
That makes Beal the steal of the year for the Clippers. He has averaged 21.5 points, 4.3 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game in his career. He is a shooting guard who has shot 37.6% from 3-point range in 13 NBA seasons to insert in place of Norman Powell, the guard they gave up in a trade with Utah last week for John Collins, a power forward who is better than anyone the Clippers currently have playing forward.
On paper, at least, the Clippers now look more formidable. The team that won 50 regular-season games last season, that’s led by a great coach in Tyronn Lue, and that pushed the Denver Nuggets to a seventh game in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs is now clearly more talented than it was at the end of last season.
On paper, the Clippers look tough.
They have more ball-handling with Beal, who also provides the scoring to replace Powell’s pop. And there’s more defense around the rim with Collins and the newly acquired Brook Lopez – who both give the Clippers different looks and sudden depth around the basket.
On paper, they look like they could be contenders. Starting for the Clippers: James Harden and Beal in the backcourt, plus two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, Collins and Ivica Zubac. And that lineup has a quintet of proven role players to back them up: Kris Dunn, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum and Lopez.
But there’s one big catch.
At a time when youth is winning the day in the NBA, the Clippers are trying it the other way. At least for now, at least until their partnership with Leonard – under contract until July 2027 – expires.
Now, in addition to the 32-year-old Beal, they’ve brought aboard the 37-year-old Lopez to play alongside the 35-year-old Harden and 34-year-old Leonard.
Can they keep Kawhi and all those other old guys on the court during the six-month regular season and then make a 2-month playoff run?
Doubt it.
Breaking news: Chris Paul, the 40-year-old former Clipper, agreed Monday night to sign a one-year contract with the Clippers. That will raise the team’s average age even more.
The team’s new motto: Old Guys Rule.
contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com
