Tennis Players Compete in National Tournament

Two world travelers and three Southern Section singles champions will lead a group of 24 players from Southern California competing in the U.S. Tennis Assn. boys’ 18 Super National Hardcourt Championships today through Aug. 12 in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Ninth-seeded Prakash Amritraj of Encino and No. 10 Lester Cook of Sherman Oaks are the top Southern California players among the 32 seeded players in the 192-player singles draw.

Amritraj, who lost a first-round match in the junior tournament at Wimbledon, and Cook, who lost in the first round of doubles at the Mercedes-Benz Cup last week, have competed primarily in International Tennis Federation tournaments the last few months.

Amritraj, a former Studio City Harvard-Westlake standout and the third-place finisher in the boys’ 16 Super National Hardcourt Championships last year, won an ITF doubles title with cousin Stephen Amritraj of Calabasas in March. The pair also won the 18s doubles title at the USTA Easter Bowl Super National Championships in April.

Robert Yim of Glendale enters the Hardcourt Super National tournament as the 15th-seeded player after placing sixth in the USTA boys’ 18 Super National Clay Court Championships last week. Yim won an ITF singles title in Panama and reached the final of a tournament in Costa Rica in March.

Three others among the top seeds have won Southern Section individual championships. Doug Stewart of Malibu, who is seeded No. 25, won this year’s title. No. 19-seeded K.C. Corkery of Manhattan Beach won last year and 20th-seeded Philip Sheng of Thousand Oaks won in 1999. The only other area player among the top 32 is 24th-seeded Drew Hoskins of Los Alamitos.

Running concurrently with the 18s tournament will be the USTA boys’ 16 Super National Hardcourt Championships, also in Kalamazoo.

In the 16s, which begin Saturday, No. 7 Justin Montgomery of Oxnard, No. 12 Jack Li of Irvine and No. 13 Jamil Al-Agba of Camarillo are the top Southern California players among the 32 seeded players.