Huber Puts a Halt to Her Faltering, Rallies to Win Girls’ 16s Title

Ditta Huber was still four games away from a defeat in the U.S. Tennis Assn. Girls’ 16s National Championships singles final Saturday, but for all intents and purposes, she already had lost it. Or so it seemed.

After winning the first set in a tiebreaker, third-seeded Huber of La Jolla dropped the second set, 6-1, and was trailing, 2-0, with No. 4 Lisa Pugliese of Boca Raton, Fla., serving.

Pugliese could sense it. The crowd of about 500 who watched at Morley Field’s stadium court sensed it. The hometown favorite, who had played nearly perfectly for a week, wouldn’t pull this one out.

Then Huber, 14, went from awful to awesome. She won the last six games, breaking Pugliese’s serve three times, and won, 7-6 (9-7), 1-6, 6-2.

Huber later teamed with Lindsay Davenport of Palos Verdes to win the doubles championship.

Huber and Pugliese approached the singles final with different game plans and never deviated. Huber attacked from the opening serve, usually sending powerful topspin returns toward the corners. Pugliese, who beat Huber, 7-5, 6-2, in the 1990 Easter Bowl tournament, chose to be patient, rally and let Huber beat herself.

As a result, it was practically Huber’s match to win or lose.

And after winning the first set, Huber hit the skids. For eight consecutive games, she couldn’t get anything to fall. Everything was long, wide or in the net. Twenty-two of the 30 points Pugliese scored while winning the second set came on Huber misses. And before Huber served at love-40 in the final game of the set, she cried out loud, “I don’t know how to stop it.”

“I lost my concentration,” Huber said. “I was getting frustrated. I tried everything. I tried to slow the ball down. I tried to hit though it. I tried to lob. It just wasn’t working.

“But I’m not one to worry. I just kept hitting.”

And the errors kept coming for Huber, who opened the third set by hitting wildly on seven of the first eight points. Then, in the third game, Huber said she looked up at some of the other players who were watching. The thought occured to her that she and Pugliese, by winning this tournament, were the only ones who still had a shot a wild-card berth in the Junior U.S. Open in September.

“I don’t know what made me think of it, but it just went though my mind,” Huber said.

The thought of playing against foreign players and possibly hitting with “someone famous” at Flushing Meadows, N.Y., sparked Huber’s third-set comeback. She hit an overhead smash to break Pugliese’s second serve, then won the last six games. She closed out the match with two backhand service returns for winners.

“I have no idea what happened,” Pugliese said. “She just became more confident all of a sudden.”

Huber led Pugliese, 4-2, in the first set but Pugliese broke back to lead, 5-4. Huber then went ahead, 6-5, before Pugliese forced a tiebreaker. Huber led, 4-0, in the tiebreaker, then made five consecutive unforced errors to give Pugliese a 5-4 lead. Huber won when Pugliese missed long with a return.

But as she did throughout the match, Huber dominated the set with 26 winners and 28 unforced errors; Pugliese had 13 and 15.

Huber and Davenport, seeded No. 1 in doubles, defeated fourth-seeded Amy Chiminello of Melrose, Mass., and Holyn Lord of Carmel, Ind., 6-0, 7-5.