TENNIS / DANA HADDAD : Pope Sacrificing Present for Future

Derek Pope would rather be lounging at some breezy Ventura beach than swatting mosquitoes with his tennis racket in the muggy heat of Florida.

And sometimes the 17-year-old from Ojai wonders why he’s spending his summers 3,000 miles from home--away from his family, cut off from his friends.

Those thoughts usually come haunting at night, when Pope is recovering from his six-hour workouts at Amre Sammakia Tennis Academy in Lake Mary. Life in the swampy Orlando, Fla., hinterland is quiet and slow.

“I miss home, I really do,” Pope said.

To invest in his tennis future, Pope is making sacrifices now. Instead of graduating from Nordhoff High with his lifelong friends in 1994, he’ll graduate from Lake Mary High while training six days a week at the academy.

The investment is paying off.

Pope, 6-feet-2 and 230 pounds, has lost nearly 25 pounds since January. And less than three weeks ago, he won his first national championship when he and Jakob Pietrowski of Huntington Beach won the boys’ 18-and-under doubles draw in the U.S. Tennis Assn.’s national junior clay-court championships in Lexington, Ky.

Pope and Pietrowski, who were semifinalists at the Southern California Tennis Assn.’s sectional tournament one month earlier, defeated Paul Goldstein of New Jersey and B.J. Stearns of Florida, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.

“This is like getting a piano off my back,” said Pope, who had faced Goldstein and Stearns in the finals before and lost. “All these years of coming close, then to finally win in 18s. . . . it was big.

“In the past, we’d let up or miss critical shots in key moments. This time we basically stayed with the fundamentals. We hit the right shots when we needed them. We were hitting all of our serves hard and they were going in.”

Pope was tired of being a bridesmaid after reaching doubles finals at the national junior hard courts in 12s and both the national indoor and clay courts in 14s. And what made this victory even more satisfying was that Goldstein and Stearns were the USTA’s No. 1- and No. 3-ranked boys’ 16 singles players last year.

Pope is no slouch. He ranked third in the final SCTA boys’ 16 poll last year and was ranked 12th by the USTA in doubles. But an early exit in the boys’ 18 singles at the Southern California sectional in June seemed to put a damper on all the hard work in Florida.

And sometimes homesick feelings strike him on the court during the long, hot workouts. That’s when a renewed Pope gets his legs pumping and bears down.

“It’s tough being away like this,” he said, “but it’s going to pay off in the future. It’s going to get me an education.”

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Victories keep coming: Pope and Pietrowski were knocking on the door of another big victory at the USTA national junior championships in Kalamazoo, Mich., until they lost in the semifinals Thursday. Seeded only fourth in boys’ 18 doubles despite being the only team to win a national tournament this year, Pope and Pietrowski had advanced by beating Philip Tseng of Harvard-Westlake High and Cecil Mamitt of Anaheim.

Jason Weiss of Calabasas and Kevin Kim of Fullerton did it again to Bob and Mike Bryan of Camarillo in 16s at Kalamazoo. Fifth-seeded Weiss-Kim, who had never beaten the third-seeded Bryans before doing so in the Southern California sectional in June, have now beaten them back to back. The score this time: 6-2, 6-3 in the quarterfinals.

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Unhappy endings: Meilen Tu of Northridge, Krissy Hamilton of Agoura Hills and Ania Bleszynski of Thousand Oaks ranked among the favorites in the 128-player national girls’ 18 singles tournament in San Jose. But all were knocked out of the main draw the past two days, Hamilton and Bleszynski being eliminated on Wednesday, Tu losing to the top-seeded player in Thursday’s quarterfinals.

“I know Ania and Kristen were very disappointed--and I am too,” Tu said after losing in three sets to Janet Lee of Rancho Palos Verdes. “But now I want to win the back draw. I want to continue working on my game.”

Tu, a member of the U.S. junior national team and fifth-seeded in the tournament, fell to Lee, 7-5, 1-6, 6-2, in a match she says she should have won. But now Tu is concerned about how she bounces back--knowing both Hamilton and Bleszynski bowed out quickly to unseeded players Thursday.

“I think they both should have won,” Tu said.

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Grand slam of a tournament: Roscoe Tanner, teaching pro at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, will welcome some old friends to his place for the Infinity Champions tennis tournament Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis.

These players captured 21 grand slam championships among them in their prime. Now they and other luminaries from the past are starting their own legends-type tour. The event at Sherwood will be the second of three 1993 Champions Tour tournaments.

Dick Stockton, John Lloyd, Jose-Luis Clerc, Marty Riessen, Harold Solomon, Guillermo Vilas and Johan Kriek also have committed, leaving one open slot in the 12-player draw.