Ryan Moore Works Hard on Court to Overcome Height Disadvantage : Tennis: 5-foot-6 Servite student is favored in this week’s Southern California Junior Sectional boys’ 16 division.

Caryll Moore already had two sons and a daughter playing tennis, so she was determined not to push her youngest son, Ryan, into the sport.

But Caryll Moore soon realized Ryan was more determined than she was.

“When he was 3 or 4, he’d pick up a racket that would be lying in the house and he’d hit the ball against a wall for hours,” she said. “He’d come running into our bedroom every Saturday and Sunday morning and say, ‘OK, let’s go play tennis.’

“Sometimes we’d be out late on a Friday night, but here would come 6 o’clock and we’d be crawling out of bed and out to the courts [at Sunny Hills Racquet Club] with Ryan.”

The Moores are getting more sleep these days, but Ryan, now 15, has not lost any of his enthusiasm for tennis. Moore is favored to win the boys’ 16 division at the Southern California Junior Sectional this week.

Moore, who is seeded No. 1, opens play Wednesday at Neal Machander Tennis Center in Santa Ana. He earned his top seeding by winning the Long Beach and Fullerton sectional tournaments this year. He also advanced to the round of 16 at the Easter Bowl national tournament in Palm Springs before losing to top-seeded Rodolfo Rake of Florida.

Rake had a size advantage of nearly eight inches on Moore, who stands 5 feet 6. But Moore, who was only 5-2 when he won the boys’ 14 division at Ojai two years ago, is used to looking up at opponents.

“I’ve always had the will to win,” said Moore, who recently finished his freshman year at Servite High. “I’ve had to stand up for myself. When I play somebody at national tournaments and they see how big I am, they’re usually overconfident. And overconfidence is a bad thing.”

Moore has been able to overcome his diminutive frame by taking advantage of his strengths--mental toughness and quickness. Since he was 4, Moore has been able to stay on the court for hours.

“He’s always had a passion for it,” Caryll Moore said. “He grew up with tennis players. So I guess he got it by osmosis. We’ve always told him not to do this for anybody but yourself. But he’s always been serious about tennis. He’s never fooled around with a racket. When he plays, it’s serious.”

Moore also was serious about baseball for a while. In fact, he was one of the better hitters on his Little League team.

“I always had good hand-eye coordination,” he said. “I always saw the ball well. I never struck out. My nicknames was ‘Ropes,’ because I always hit the ball on a line.”

But Moore realized if he was ever going to star in tennis, he would have to dedicate more time to it. So he quit baseball three years ago. By then, Moore’s parents had built a tennis court in their back yard and Moore had begun working more with Chuck Pate, a pro at Tustin Hills Racquet Club, who has coached Moore for eight years.

Pate said he could tell early on that Moore had qualities that can’t be taught.

“When you’ve been coaching for 25, 30 years, you can tell which kids can play and which kids can’t,” Pate said. “Ryan had good feet, good hands and the ability to focus on tennis.”

Even when Moore was playing people almost a foot taller, Pate said he never viewed Moore’s lack of size as a big disadvantage.

“When you’re smaller, you have to work a little harder and you have to hit the ball a little harder than the taller player,” Pate said. “It’s not so much how big you are, but how much court you can cover.”

Fullerton’s Joseph Gilbert, who has practiced with Moore for the last three years, said no one covers the court like Moore.

“He’s fast,” Gilbert said. “He covers the court better than most players around here. You have to be mentally prepared to play Ryan, knowing that he’s always going to get the ball back and you’re always going to have to hit that one more shot.”

Although two years older than Moore, Gilbert said he wouldn’t want to face Moore in a tournament.

“I’d much rather play a higher-ranked player who’s not going to try as hard,” Gilbert said. “I know when I go out there in practice with Ryan, he’s not going to give me anything.”

But if Moore is going to continue to improve, he realizes he must become more than the player nobody wants to play. Even Michael Chang, who had a similar reputation on the professional tour, developed a decent first serve to go with his speed and mental toughness.

“I’m trying to hit my first serve harder and come into the net more,” Moore said.

Said Gilbert: “He’s going to have to develop a serve that puts people on the defensive. I don’t know of too many juniors who can out ground stroke him, but he’s got to get more aggressive so he’s not always hitting ground strokes from the baseline. I was a counter-puncher like he was, but I learned to get more aggressive.”

It would help Moore’s aggressiveness if he grew a few more inches, but Moore isn’t worried about that.

“Nobody in my family is really short, so I’ve always known I’ll wind up to be about 5-9 or 5-10,” said Moore, whose brother, Scott, won the Division III singles championship in 1984 while playing for Redlands.

Moore has no idols in professional tennis, but there are a couple players he likes.

“I like [Stefan] Edberg’s volleys and [Ivan] Lendl’s ground strokes,” he said. “If anybody could have that combination, they’d be No. 1 for a long time.”

And if anybody had that combination to go along with Moore’s passion and tenacity, they would probably never lose.

Tennis notes

More than 1,800 players are entered in 10 age divisions at the Southern California Junior Sectional tournament that began Saturday at seven sites in Orange County. The event, conducted by the Southern California Junior Tennis Assn., concludes Sunday at the Los Caballeros Sports Village in Fountain Valley. The top 16 players in each age division were held out until Wednesday.