Boys’ tennis: Klincke upsets defending champion at City Individuals
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Rain threatened to postpone quarterfinal matches in Thursday’s City Section Individual tournament at the Balboa Sports Center in Encino. Instead, after a 35-minute delay, the courts dried up, play resumed and all of the higher-seeded players won except defending singles champion J.R. Sarmiento of Carson.
Sarmiento, seeded second, was upset by fifth-seeded Dillon Klincke of North Hollywood, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), in the last match of the day. Sarmiento took a 4-2 lead in the third set but, at 4-4, he started cramping and had to take an injury timeout.
Klincke plays No. 3 Dennis Mkrtchian of Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies in next Wednesday’s semifinals. Mkrtchian beat No. 8 Joseph Valentino of Eagle Rock, 6-1, 6-2.
‘I was making contingency plans in case we couldn’t complete the round, but I decided we should wait for a while to see if the rain stopped and it did,’ event director Jim Buck said. ‘I’m glad we were able to finish.’
On the other side of the draw, top-seeded Josh Tchan of Taft won a backcourt battle with sixth-seeded Ace Matias of Narbonne, 6-2, 6-3. Tchan plays No. 4 Ken Mkrtchian of SOCES in the semifinals. Mkrtchian beat unseeded David Engelberg of Taft, 6-2, 6-2.
No one benefited from the weather delay as much as the Palisades’ doubles team of Matt Goodman and Jeremy Shore, who were down a set but still on serve in the second set when play was halted. Given additional time to discuss strategy, the Dolphins’ duo, seeded third, won the last nine games to beat sixth-seeded Dom Plata and Evan Kopel of Granada Hills, 4-6, 7-5, 6-0.
‘Saved by the rain,’ is how Palisades Coach Bud Kling described the turnaround. ‘It was 4-4, 15-all in the second set when play stopped, so they won nine of the last 10 games.’
Palisades’ other doubles team, No. 4 Ren Nielsen and Kyung Choi also rallied from a set down to beat eighth-seeded Robert Chew and Greg Fukushima of Venice, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Top-seeded Andrew Sarawasi and Sammy Macias of Carson easily handled fifth-seeded Brian Feldman and Julius Nazareno of Marshall, 6-2, 6-0, and second-seeded Aaron Teitelbaum and Alex Freeman of City champion Taft kept their undefeated record intact with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over No. 7 Ramon De Villa and Bevis Tran of Eagle Rock.
-- Steve Galluzzo