THE SILENCER

Shy, soft-spoken Robert Yim of Glendale High responds to questions and opponents’ attempts to outhit and outwit him the same way.

With the short answer.

Points didn’t last long as Yim ran Hadley Ogle of Irvine and Blake Roberts of Carlsbad along the baseline and ended most rallies with a devastating forehand in two victories in boys’ high school singles Thursday in the 100th Ojai tennis tournament at the Thacher School.

He defeated Ogle, 6-2, 6-0, and downed Roberts, 6-1, 6-1.

Yim advanced to the round of 16, where he will face top-seeded Philip Sheng of Thousand Oaks at 8 a.m. today at Thacher.

“The power was good,” Yim said. “I played pretty good. I just had to move them around.”

Like his opponents, Yim has been on the move.

He has progressed quickly through the ranks of top junior players in the area.

Yim, a 15-year-old freshman at Glendale, ranked as high as No. 3 in the boys’ 14 division of the U.S. Tennis Assn.’s Southern California section in 1998.

His success prompted an early move to boys’ 16s in 1999, when Yim could have competed in 14s.

Yim finished last year ranked No. 17 in Southern California 16s and No. 98 nationally. He has since improved to No. 87 nationally.

“I didn’t really care about 14s,” Yim said. “It didn’t matter and my game was already in 16s.”

Bruce Foxworth, Yim’s coach, agreed, but his feelings about the move were mixed.

“He had a great game, an all-around game,” Foxworth said. “Angles, touch, power, he’s got it all.

“But sometimes I think that’s a cop-out because when you lose, you can always say, ‘Yeah, but I played up.’ Sometimes you need to just work on winning, no matter who it’s against.”

Yim is 44-1 this season, his only loss last week against Mark Contreras of Arcadia. Yim beat Contreras once and Gordon Hong, also of Arcadia, twice in Pacific League play. He has gotten the better of Tigran Martirosyan, Burbank’s No. 1 player; Adam Zunder, Campbell Hall’s No. 1 player, and Justin Levy, Loyola’s No. 1 player.

“He has a tremendous combination of power and control,” Coach Bob Davidson of Glendale said.

“He can do a variety of things. He can really crush it if he wants, or he can hit the angles. He does that better than anyone his age I’ve ever seen, I think.”

In his success at Glendale, Yim has followed in the footsteps of his brother Philip Yim, who plays for the Air Force Academy.

Yim compares favorably to Ji Chung, a 1997 graduate of Glendale who reached the quarterfinals of the Southern Section tournament as a senior, and Rae Cho, who went to the Southern Section semifinals.

“And I’d have to say Robert’s better than all of them at this age,” Davidson said.

Yim, 5-foot-5 and a stocky 135 pounds, has been helped recently by a bigger serve, and drills to improve conditioning and quickness.

Yim’s serve has been improved with a better toss and follow-through.

“I’m lazy,” Yim admits. “I try to run and then I stop. I just don’t like to run.”

Instead, he uses superior skills and a variety of shots to run opponents into the ground.

“I have a good feel,” Yim said. “I hit the right shots at the right time.”