Easter Bowl Junior Tennis Event Features 3 Seeded O.C. Players
Three Orange County players are seeded in the Easter Bowl junior tennis tournament, which begins today at the Riviera Resort & Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Doubles play begins in three age groups today and singles play starts Sunday in three age groups.
Kevin Kim of Fullerton and Geoff Abrams of Newport Beach are seeded sixth and ninth in the boys’ 18 singles division and Taylor Dent of Newport Beach is seeded eighth in the boys’ 16 singles. Both divisions begin singles play Monday. For the first time, the winners of the boys’ and girls’ 18s singles titles will receive wild-card entries into professional events.
The boys’ 18 champion will get a wild card into the qualifying event for the $320,000 Infiniti Open in Los Angles in July and a wild card into the $50,000 Indian Wells Challenger in March of 1997. The girls’ 18 champion will receive a wild card into the $75,000 Indian Wells Challenger, Oct. 14-20.
Kim lost in the boys’ 18 final last year to San Jose’s Ryan Wolters in three sets. Wolters is a freshman at Stanford. Abrams lost in the first round of the main draw but he won the event in 1994 and is playing his best tennis in years. Abrams and Kim reached the quarterfinals of Asuncion Bowl in Paraguay last month. Abrams, ranked 20th in the world junior rankings, also advanced to the semifinals of the Banana Bowl in Brazil the following week, knocking off top-seeded Mariano Puerta of Argentina in the quarterfinals.
Dent, a freshman at Corona del Mar High, was the No. 1-ranked 14-year-old last year. He is playing his first year of 16s and has been experiencing nagging physical problems associated with growing so quickly.
Other county players in the tournament are Joseph Gilbert and Ryan Moore, who live in Fullerton, in the boys’ 18s, Michael Nguyen of Mission Viejo in the boys’ 14s, Villa Park’s Faye DeVera and Irvine’s Natalie Exon in the girls’ 18s, Orange’s Katey Becker and Corona del Mar’s Nina Vaughan in the girls’ 16s, and Valencia’s Jieun Jacobs, Newport Beach’s Leslie Cayan, Huntington Beach’s Melissa Esmero and Corona del Mar’s Nadia Vaughan in the girls’ 14s.
The singles divisions will have 384 players from more than 40 states. Several more players who didn’t qualify for the singles draw will play doubles. Two of the county’s better players--Santa Ana’s Joost Hol and Irvine’s Chase Exon--just missed qualifying for the singles draw and are alternates. Moore had been an alternate but was allowed into the draw Friday afternoon when his friend Trent Miller pulled out because of an injury.
The girls’ 14 and 16 and boys’ 14 singles finals are Friday. The boys’ 16 and 18 and girls’ 18 singles finals are Saturday.