Kim and Dent Can’t Handle Opponents, Lose in Quarterfinals

Some days you just have to give the other guy his due. Thursday was one of those days for Fullerton’s Kevin Kim and Newport Beach’s Taylor Dent.

Kim and Dent never had a chance against their opponents--Mike Bryan of Camarillo and Carter Morris of Washington, D.C.--in the singles quarterfinals of the Easter Bowl Junior Tennis Tournament at the Riviera Resort and Country Club.

Bryan, who hadn’t beaten Kim in almost four years, might have given Andre Agassi a game Thursday. He defeated Kim, 6-2, 6-1, in the boys’ 18 division. The match lasted less than an hour.

“I don’t think I’ve ever played better, not in a tournament and especially not against a great player like Kevin Kim,” said Bryan, a teammate of Kim’s on the USTA national team. “I served well and I knew he couldn’t break me. That allowed me to just swing away at his serves.”

Bryan, whose twin brother Bob also reached the boys’ 18 singles semifinals, said he has been waiting to beat Kim.

“There’s a lot of history,” he said. “I just wanted to beat him the last year of 18s in the Easter Bowl. He’s been beating us [6-1, 6-0] a lot the last few years. He gave me one of my toughest losses ever two years ago at the [national] Clay Courts. I hope I have his number now.”

Bryan and Kim, the third and sixth seeded players, split the first four games of the first set, but Bryan won the next nine games before Kim was able to get on the board again. Although Kim was losing points and games, he wasn’t tanking. Whatever he tried failed.

If he charged, Bryan would could come up with an unbelievable passing shot. If he stayed back, Bryan would hit a clean winner down the line or make a surprise move to the net and hit a crisp volley. The best point of the match came three points before it ended.

Kim ran Bryan all around the court, but each time Bryan came up with a big shot. Finally, Bryan won the point with a backhand volley down the line.

“I don’t think he played that bad, I just played really well,” said Bryan, who will play at Stanford next year with his brother and Newport Beach’s Geoff Abrams.

Dent didn’t play badly either. But Morris, like Bryan, was in a zone. Dent was the higher seeded player with the bigger name, but Morris said he used that to his advantage in winning, 6-2, 6-3, in the 16s quarterfinals.

“I was real nervous at the beginning,” he said. “His game is so big and his forehand is so big. Everybody was talking about him. Everybody knows who his dad is and that the national coaches like him. I wanted to see if he could hit all those shots they said he could.”

Dent hit all those shots, but many of them weren’t landing between the lines or carrying over the net. After playing nearly perfect tennis for three days, Dent finally played like a 14-year-old Thursday. And Morris played more like an 18-year-old.

“I made only one unforced error the first set,” Morris said. “Taylor hadn’t had any close matches and he was pretty confident coming in.”

But Dent’s confidence was broken along with his serve in the second game of the match. Late in the second set, Dent began to gain some momentum when he won eight consecutive points and trimmed the lead to 5-3. But the momentum changed when Dent hit a volley down the line was called out by Morris. Dent argued the point that gave Morris a 15-0 lead. Four points later, the match was over.

Notes

Geoff Abrams of Newport Beach was eliminated in the backdraw of the boys’ 18 singles by Shuon Madden of Miami. Fullerton’s Joseph Gilbert lost to Michael Lang of Bradenton, Fla. . . . Nina Vaughan of Corona del Mar lost her first-round match in the girls’ 16s, then won five consecutive matches before losing to Katia Bogomolova of Miami, Fla., 3-6, 6-1, 6-1, in the semifinals of the backdraw.