Gurney Continues to Send Seeded Opponents Reeling

If Melissa Gurney becomes one of the big names on the women’s professional tennis circuit as everyone expects, she may look back upon her performance at this week’s Virginia Slims of San Diego tennis tournament as something of a turning point.

Gurney, who shares the nation’s No. 1 ranking for juniors with Stephanie Rehe, came back after a 6-1, 6-0 win over Andrea Jaeger Wednesday night to defeat No. 8-seeded Beth Herr, 6-3, 6-3, in a quarter-final match Friday afternoon at the San Diego Hilton Beach and Tennis Resort.

Gurney will meet unseeded Annabel Croft at 7 tonight in the semifinals of the $75,000 tournament. The other semifinal matchup, at noon, will pit Mary Lou Piatek against top-seeded Wendy Turnbull, who downed Betsy Naglesen Friday night, 6-4, 6-3.

Meanwhile, Gurney’s victory on Friday seemed to put a little life into the ongoing question of when the 15-year-old phenom from Palos Verdes will turn pro.

“I’m not planning on turning pro for a little while,” Gurney said. “Probably right before Wimbledon.”

Why not take the winnings from this week’s tournament, it was asked.

“That would be nice,” Gurney said. “I really hadn’t expected to do that well in this tournament because there were a lot of big names. I’ve never done this well before.”

And Herr, undoubtedly, wishes that Gurney hadn’t picked this week to get started.

“I actually don’t think I played that well,” said Gurney, who needed only 40 minutes to beat Jaeger Wednesday night, but won Friday in 1 hour, 10 minutes.

“The wind threw off our positioning and we both hit a lot of balls off-center.”

Herr appeared to be especially troubled by the wind and mishit her topspin backhand several times to give Gurney easy points.

Gurney secured the first break of the match in the fourth game when she whipped a forehand down the line past Herr for a 3-1 lead.

Herr got the break back in the seventh game thanks to nicely played drop shot and an overhead that just caught the sideline on game point.

But Herr continued to struggle in the eighth and ninth games and made unforced errors on two game points to drop the set.

With a one-set cushion, Gurney was able to wait back at the baseline where she finally wore down her opponent.

“I couldn’t really come in because of the wind,” Gurney said. “If she would have hit a lob, it would have been difficult to play. I feel much more comfortable on the baseline, anyway.”

With the second set tied, 2-2, Gurney rallied from 0-40 on Herr’s serve to get a break to turn the match in her favor for good.

Gurney held serve at love in the sixth game, then moments later, wrapped it up when Herr hit long on a forehand after saving one match point.

In Friday’s other semifinal, Turnbull overcame a shaky first serve to down Naglesen and become the only seeded player to advance to the semifinals.

“I wasn’t getting a high percentage of first serves in but I was hitting a better second serve than usual,” said Turnbull, who broke in the 10th game of the first set and the eighth game of the second set to win in 1 hour, 8 minutes.