TEAMTENNIS : Tiebreaker Not Super for the Strings in Loss

With one point remaining, Trevor Kronemann, the San Antonio Racquets’ player known for his booming serve, held the Los Angeles Strings’ first match of the year in his hand.

The Strings and Racquets were even as could be. Tied at 24 games apiece. Tied at six points in the best-of-13 super-tiebreaker.

Kronemann finished them off with a hard serve that String player/coach John Lloyd could only deflect out of bounds.

The Strings lost their 1992 TeamTennis opener, 25-24, Wednesday night at the Forum.

It took a rally in the mixed doubles match to get the Strings into the super-tiebreaker.

Trailing, 22-18, after the first four sets, the Strings tied the match with a 6-2 victory by Lloyd and Mary Lou Daniels over San Antonio’s Kronemann and Louise Allen.

Carrie Cunningham didn’t have an easy time in her TeamTennis debut with the Strings. The 20-year-old rookie struggled with unforced errors in her doubles match, but she and Daniels managed to defeat Ginger Helgeson and Allen, 6-5.

Then, Cunningham had more trouble in her singles match against Helgeson, the former Pepperdine player who was TeamTennis female rookie of the year with Charlotte in 1991.

Helgeson won, 6-1, and Cunningham seemed out of sync throughout.

In the men’s doubles, Jimmy Connors and Lloyd blew a 4-1 lead to Jean-Philippe Fleurian and Kronemann, a former UC Irvine All-American.

Kronemann and Fleurian ended up taking the set, 6-5, with a 5-3 victory in the best-of-nine tiebreaker game.

In the men’s singles, Connors rallied for a 6-5 victory against Fleurian.

Fleurian, 27, who served harder and ran faster than the 39-year-old Connors, could not put Connors away, despite a 4-2 lead in the tiebreaker game.

Connors won the tiebreaker, 5-4, and gave Daniels and Lloyd a chance to pull the Strings even in the final set.