Two Titles Are Better Than One for Yelsey

Anne Yelsey was playing so well in the Easter Bowl/U.S. Tennis Assn. Super National Championships, she didn’t care if the tournament ever ended.

“I feel like I can outlast anybody,” she said. “I think that’s my strength, and I’ll stay out there all day if I have to.”

Considering Yelsey’s 6-4, 7-5 upset victory over Mary Gambale of Billerica, Mass., in the girls’ 18 division singles championship match Saturday at Riviera Resort and Racquet Club in Palm Springs, that was a good thing.

The No. 4-seeded Gambale, 14, engaged No. 9-seeded Yelsey, 17, in a baseline slugfest in which both players wore kid gloves much of the time, but Gambale ran out of gas before Yelsey ran out of patience in a nearly hypnotic match with many lengthy rallies.

Yelsey, a Corona del Mar High senior ranked No. 15 nationally in the girls’ 18’s division by the USTA, led throughout the first set and rallied from a 5-2 deficit in the second to claim her first Super National singles title.

The victory came one day after she and partner Riza Zalameda, a Beverly Hills High junior, teamed to win the tournament’s girls’ 18 doubles championship.

Yelsey’s first-set success and second-set comeback against Gambale in a nearly 2 1/2-hour match were rooted in an ability to use superior power and precision to attack and pick up the pace amid the repetitive groundstrokes and series of moon-shot lobs that Gambale offered up.

Ahead 5-4 in the 10th game of the second set, for example, Gambale had a set point, but Yelsey saved it with a crosscourt forehand for deuce on the 43rd shot between the two. Yelsey squandered four game points before tying the score at 5-5. With Gambale serving at 3-2 and love-15 in the sixth game of the second set, another numbing rally -- the longest of the match -- ended when Yelsey hit a forehand wide after the players had traded 35 shots each.

Ninth-seeded Alex Kuznetsov of Richboro, Pa., and third-seeded Joshua Cohen of Wesley Chapel, Fla., engaged in a similarly hard-fought battle before Kuznetsov prevailed, 7-6 (3), 6-2, in the boys’ 18 singles championship match.

Cohen fought off four set points before losing in the tiebreaker.

Calabasas High sophomore Gary Sacks won the boys’ 16 division third-place playoff, 7-5, 6-0, over Alexander Clayton of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.