Professionals, locals dominate MB Tennis Open

There was good news and even better news for Manhattan Beach tennis star Joey Rotheram this past weekend.

Rotheram made his family and his hometown fans proud Sunday afternoon when he partnered with his college teammate Victor Krustev to win the Open Division doubles crown at the Manhattan Beach Open by upsetting the top-seeded team of Austin Rapp and Zac Brodney 6-1, 6-3.

And although he lost in the quarterfinals of the Open Division singles, Rotheram was pleasantly surprised by the news that now there are only four degrees of separation between himself and Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “That’s crazy.”

Here’s the tennis logic: Rotheram lost to Austin Rapp in the quarterfinals of the Open Division Saturday morning. Rapp then lost to Clay Thompson (not the basketball star) of Venice in the semi-finals Saturday afternoon. And in the Sunday afternoon finals, Thompson lost to Philip Bester of West Hills, who beat Djokovic two years ago in the first round of the Canadian Open in Toronto.

So that sequence of losses left Rotheram only four wins short of beating the Wimbledon champ. Not bad for a kid who played one year at Mira Costa and now plays for the University of California at Santa Barbara.

The new MB Open champ Bester, 29, grew up in Vancouver, so he admittedly had a home crowd advantage when he beat Djokovic, who at the time was ranked number one in the world.

Bester said he retired last fall after 11 years on the men’s pro circuit, which he entered right out of high school. He reached a career high ranking of 220 in the world in singles play and a ranking of 140 in doubles play. He won the French Open Junior Championship in 2006 and played Davis Cup for Canada.

So how did such an accomplished player from Canada find his way to little old Manhattan Beach for a tournament that has $3,000 total prize money and paid only $1,600 to the Men’s Open Division winner, less than what a first-round loser gets at the bigger tournaments on the pro tour?

Bester said he had recently moved to Westlake Village to become the full-time tennis coach of 15-year-old Emma Gretsky, a rising SoCal junior player. And yes, she is the youngest daughter of hockey hero Wayne Gretsky, arguably the greatest player in the history of the National Hockey League and inarguably the greatest player in the history of the Los Angeles Kings.

“I had a little time off, and I still enjoy the competition, so when I heard about the tournament I decided to enter it,” he said. “I’m glad I did. It’s a fun, well-run tournament.”

In the semi-finals, Bester beat 17-year-old Miles Jones of Marina Del Rey, who displayed a smooth, polished game that could one day lead him to the men’s pro tour. Bester said he is a promising player with real potential, but warned that aspiring pros need to prepare themselves for a grueling, often lonely lifestyle that involves traveling to a new tournament every week and absorbing frequent losses. After all, every tournament can have only one winner, and the rest are losers whether in the first round or the finals.

“Tennis on the pro tour is a tough sport with a lot of losing,” he said. ‘It’s really important to stay humble and just work hard to get better every day and practice with a purpose.”  

Thompson, who was beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Bester in the MB Open Finals, also said he had recently retired from the men’s pro tour at the age of 26 with a career high ranking of 408. “I played Bester three times and beat him once before this match,” Thompson said. “He’s a really, really good player.”

While the men’s Open Final was competitive, the best match of the four-day tournament was Saturday afternoon’s semi-final in which Thompson beat Rapp 1-6, 6-1, 6-1 under a blazing sun.

Warming up, the two tall, lanky players appeared to be mirror images of each other: Thompson played for UCLA where he was ranked first in NCAA singles before graduating in 2014. Rapp currently plays for UCLA and has a similar power game: huge serve and fierce top-spin laden ground strokes with an occasional drop shot thrown in to vary the pace and rhythm. But for the most part, it was first-strike, base-line bashing, big-boy tennis.

Rapp won the first four games before Thompson finally won a game with a backhand down the line passing shot. But Rapp got back on track and continued to win most of the points until finally, a frustrated Thompson slammed his racquet to the court as he lost the first set 6-1.

Thompson’s cracked racquet seemed to reset the match dynamic for both players. As Rapp put it afterward, “Suddenly he started playing great and I started playing horrible. I Couldn’t keep the ball on the court.”

It got so bad for Rapp that he slammed a ball out of the court and onto the nearby baseball diamond. Someone threw the errant ball back and it hit Tournament Director Michael Hudak in the head. “That was surreal,” Thompson said afterward. “The whole match was the most surreal two hours of my life.”

In the Women’s Open Division Final, top-seeded Solyman Colling of Orange beat unseeded Monica Robinson of Valley Center.

In addition to the Open Divisions, there was plenty of action in the lower divisions, with a total of 185 players entered in the tournament. And there was another hometown winner. Tom Aguilar of Manhattan Beach won the men’s 4.0 singles division.

Tournament Director Hudak declared the tournament a big success thanks to support from primary sponsor Pacific Audi. He said he hopes many of the same players return next year.

“Everyone was very supportive of each other, and there was very little bad sportsmanship,” Hudak said. “We’re super excited about next year. We can’t wait to do it again.”

As for the ball that hit him in the head?

“I went through the concussion protocol and I’m OK,” he said.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor

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