Teen Finds Inspiration in Ojai Loss

The biggest draw in the first two days of the 105th Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament strode off the court, his strawberry-blond hair beneath his baseball cap darkened with sweat and his face brightened by a satisfied grin.

Thousand Oaks High junior Sam Querrey left without a victory Friday, falling, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, to top-seeded ATP tour pro Cecil Mamiit in front of about 300 spectators during the men’s Open singles quarterfinals at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. But he had an answer to one burning question.

“I wanted to see what I could do, and it was exciting,” said Querrey, who won Ojai’s CIF boys’ under-18 division last year and was coming off a victory at the Easter Bowl Super National Spring Championships last week. “I found out I could compete with top-level players.”

Querrey, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound right-hander, is the hottest junior player in the country. His ITA world ranking has jumped from No. 112 to No. 15.

His success this year has come as no surprise. He won boys’ 16 division titles last year at the USTA Super National Hard Court Championships and at the Easter Bowl, and he was a finalist in the Super National Clay Court Championships.

The 17-year-old Querrey, still somewhat wide-eyed at his own success, competed well Friday in battling back to win the second set. He also rallied from a 5-2 deficit in the third set to pull to within 5-4, but Mamiit blocked out a partisan crowd and held serve in the 10th game for the victory.

“He has a lot of fight,” Mamiit said of the seventh-seeded Querrey. “He played consistently the whole match. But he just played the same. Once he learns how to step it up a little bit, or once he gets used to returning [service] a little bit more, and putting a little pressure on, he’ll be good.”

Grant Doyle, a former tour pro and Querrey’s private coach the last two months, likes what he sees so far.

“You can tell if a guy has ability and if he has the game to make it to the next level, which he does,” Doyle said. “I think he’s starting to realize it, that he can compete with the best guys around.”

Mamiit, a 28-year-old tour veteran who won the NCAA singles title as a freshman at USC in 1996, ranked as high as No. 72 in the world in 1999. But he hasn’t won a singles tournament since taking a challenger title in Tallahassee, Fla., last May and is currently No. 243 in tour entry-system rankings.

“There’s a point in time when you have to reassess and just make another push,” Mamiit said. “Obviously, the losing part of it is something you have to handle, but it’s always part of the game. So right now, it’s me focusing in and being mentally charged up again and having the motivation to do it again.”