Breakers rout Kastles
The ball kids threw yellow stress balls into the crowd at halftime of Friday night’s World Team Tennis match.
Orange County Breakers fans could save them for later. They didn’t really need them in this match, even against the five-time defending league champion Washington Kastles.
The Breakers won every set at Newport Beach Tennis Club and finished off the match in less than two hours, posting a dominant 25-10 victory that improved Orange County to 3-2 this season.
In terms of margin of defeat, it was the worst loss in Washington’s nine-year franchise history.
“The Kastles are so used to winning that I think they’re a little shocked right now,” Breakers Coach Rick Leach said. “It was a great team effort, though. Everybody contributed. It’s pretty rare that you shut out the defending champions, granted they don’t have all of their players here.”
That was definitely true. The Kastles’ Sam Querrey and Mardy Fish are both currently out due to injury. The Kastles (3-2) also have three players — Leander Paes, Martina Hingis and Anastasia Rodionova — gone because they’re playing in the Olympics.
Still, it was a passionate effort from Orange County, which moved into a second-place tie with Washington in the six-team league. The tone was set in the opening set, when the Breakers’ Scott Lipsky and Dennis Novikov topped Ken Skupski and Bjorn Fratangelo, 5-2, in men’s doubles.
Skupski and Fratangelo were both playing in the first WTT match of their careers. To Lipsky, it was just good to play an opponent that wasn’t San Diego, as the Breakers split their first four matches and all were against the Aviators.
“First of all, I’m happy to not be playing San Diego,” Lipsky said. “That was enough of those guys. They’ve got a good team. But yeah, happy to win. We all played well today. It was the first time all season that all of us played well in all five sets, which was nice to see.
“We came out hot and won the doubles, which kind of set the tone of the match. When you win the first set and everyone else is playing from ahead, it makes it a little bit easier.”
Orange County would win two more sets by the same margin, 5-2, to take a dominant 15-6 halftime advantage. First it was Nicole Gibbs beating Madison Brengle in women’s singles, even though Brengle came into the match leading the league in that set. Gibbs is now up to second in the league standings in women’s singles.
Then, Novikov topped Fratangelo, a former French Open junior champion, in men’s singles.
“I mean, all of these players are ranked high,” Leach said. “On paper, they were probably favored, but we had the home-court advantage. If you look at the rankings, Madison is ahead of Nicole. Bjorn is ahead of Dennis; Bjorn is a highly-touted American junior. And then [Andreja] Klepac is right behind Alla [Kudryavtseva] . If you look at the rankings, they’re right there, but I think we all played well tonight.”
The Breakers’ Lipsky and Kudryavtseva beat Klepac and Skupski, 5-1, in mixed doubles before Gibbs and Kudryavtseva finished off the match by topping Klepac and Brengle, 5-3, in women’s doubles.
There were some tense moments in the women’s doubles set, as Washington rallied after Gibbs and Kudryavtseva built a 4-1 lead. The Breakers duo squandered six match points.
“Let’s go girls, finish the beat down!” a fan yelled.
They did, after breaking Brengle’s serve with four straight points. On the seventh match point, Kudryavtseva ripped a return winner to end it.
Orange County won eight of the 11 three-all game points in the match.
The Breakers return to action Saturday night when they play host to the New York Empire. The Springfield Lasers then visit Newport Beach Tennis Club on Sunday night.
