Youth Tennis: Di Giulio falls in quarterfinal

Austin Di Giulio scurried around the baseline, skidded on the concrete and lobbed, doing anything he could to try to buy some time.

The Newport Beach resident had a tough task Saturday afternoon against Jacob Bullard of Calabasas, who moved Di Giulio around the tennis court with a big lefty forehand.

This is not to say that Di Giulio was outclassed in the boys’ 16 singles quarterfinal match at the 114th annual Southern California Junior Sectionals Tennis Tournament. Di Giulio and Bullard put on a match worthy of its stadium-court location at The Tennis Club Newport Beach.

In the end, though, the No. 5-seeded Di Giulio wasn’t able to come up with quite enough offense and lost to No. 3-seeded Bullard, 7-5, 7-5. Di Giulio followed that up with a 6-4, 6-1 consolation quarterfinals loss to No. 4-seeded Robert Baylon of Buena Park, ending his tournament.

Di Giulio, 16, said he’s grown four or five inches in the past year, to his current height of 5-foot-10. The hope of Mahmoud Karimm, his coach, is that Di Giulio’s game will also take a leap of similar proportions soon.

Di Giulio broke Bullard’s serve once in each set, yet both times Di Giulio immediately had his serve broken back at key junctures of the match. In the first set, it was a loose game at 5-5 that allowed Bullard to get the break back and successfully serve for the set.

In the second set, Di Giulio was ahead, 3-1, but again couldn’t maintain the advantage.

“I served a bad game,” Di Giulio said. “I think that was a big game. If I had gotten that, I think I would have [won] the set.”

Karim, who works with Di Giulio at the Advantage Tennis Academy, agreed that Di Giulio’s serving was an issue at times throughout the match.

“Part of tennis is defense until you have the right opportunity,” Karim said. “I thought he executed that pretty well, the way he should have in this match. But when he created this opportunities, he wasn’t able to put away the points in the end. With Austin, it comes down to serving in the big parts of the match. When he goes for his big serves, automatically momentum kicks in, his feet kick in, and he’s in a better position to be aggressive. And when he’s passive on his serve, he starts getting passive.

“When it came down to the 5-all, 6-5 [games], all of a sudden he’s going for the ‘safe’ serve. The thing is, that’s sometimes when a player gets stuck in a mentality of being afraid to lose, rather than playing to win. At this level, he’s got to stay in control, get rid of the fear of putting away his shots. He has to just trust it. He trusts his defensive game, but I don’t think he really trusts his aggressive game, when it comes down to it in the tight situations.”

Bullard, 15, just finished his freshman year at Calabasas High. He won the Junior Sectionals 14s title last year. Now, after a successful high school season in which he advanced to the quarterfinals of the CIF Southern Section Individuals singles tournament, he’s back to try for another title in the 16s.

Bullard said he took confidence from his last meeting against Di Giulio, a 6-2, 7-6 victory in the title match of the Woody Hunt South Bay Junior tournament in April. Di Giulio’s scrappy game frustrated him midway through the second set Saturday, when he fell behind. Yet he somehow found his forehand again, moving on to Sunday’s semifinal against top-seeded Brandon Nakashima of San Diego.

The match was clean, with no disagreements on line calls until late in the second set, when Bullard vehemently disagreed as Di Giulio called his shot on the baseline just long. But the call stood, and Di Giulio held serve and led, 5-4.

The next time Di Giulio served, he wouldn’t be as fortunate. Bullard broke his serve at love in the 5-5 game, then quickly won his first three points on serve at 6-5 to set up match point. Di Giulio saved the first match point with a return winner, and saved another when his lob set up an overhead slam at the net. But Bullard converted the third match point, hitting a drop shot that Di Giulio couldn’t quite retrieve.

It ended a solid run in the main draw for Di Giulio, the highlight being a 6-7, 7-6, 6-3 win over Alex Scemanenco of Cardiff in the round of 32 on Thursday. Yet, thus far he has been unable to join his brother Joseph, who won three Junior Sectionals titles before moving on to play at UCLA. The closest Austin has come was making the 12s final four years ago.

The youngest Di Giulio brother is Perry, 10, who watched Austin’s match Saturday. Perry made it through Junior Sectionals qualifying in the boys’ 12s this year before losing in the round of 64.

Austin said he played solidly overall in this event.

“At the start of this tournament, I wasn’t playing too well,” Austin Di Giulio said. “Today I picked it up a little bit, but I still could have played much better. It just comes down to stuff like serves, closing the points out with volleys. From the baseline, I feel pretty good.”