World Tennis Magazine

Unique Tennis Perspectives

king of the hill

Popular Long-Time Vero Beach Doubles Tournament Now Doubles Qualifier For Mardy Fish USTA Futures

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The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships announced today that the winner and runner-up of the 22nd annual “King of the Hill” tennis tournament that starts Tuesday, January 17 at The Moorings Club in Vero Beach, Fla., will receive a main draw doubles wild card into its annual U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) Pro Circuit “Futures” event to be held April 21-30 at Grand Harbor Golf & Beach Club.

“The King of Hill” (KOTH) is the annual doubles competition featuring tennis professionals from the Vero Beach area who compete in round-robin competitions on Tuesday nights to the determine the “king” of the local tennis professional. Proceeds from “King of the Hill” benefit the Youth Guidance Mentoring & Activities Program.

The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships is the USTA’s $15,000 Futures-level tournament played in Vero Beach since 1995 and regarded as one of the best entry-level professional tennis tournaments in the world. Proceeds from the event benefit the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, the non-profit tennis foundation benefiting children, named for Vero Beach native son Mardy Fish, the former top 10 tennis star and a U.S. Davis Cup standout.

“We are happy to award a main draw doubles wild card to the winner and runner-up of the annual ‘King of the Hill’ competition that showcases the top tennis talent in the Vero Beach area,” said Tom Fish, Chairman of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation. “We are happy to work and partner with King of the Hill founder and organizer Gigi Casapu to work together to promote our respective events that are contested and promoted to raise funds to help the youth of our area.”

Many former KOTH champions and competitors have played in the Vero Beach USTA Futures, including four-time champion Robert Kowalczyk, the former USTA National Boy’s 18 Hard Court Champion, four-time champion Aldo Burga, now of The Legacy club, two-time champion Kriegler Brink, a singles semifinalist at the Vero Beach Futures in 2011, and defending KOTH champion Mike Alford, a former standout at the University of Florida, among others.

KOTH matches run every Tuesday starting at 6 pm from January 17 through February 21 at The Moorings club. Admission is $8.

Advance tickets for the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships are available at www.VeroBeachTennisTickets.com. Admission for children 18 and under is free. Approximately 3,000 fans annually attend the event, which is seen as one of the best-attended events in the world on the “Futures” level of professional tennis tournaments. The 2016 event featured 13 players who played Davis Cup for their country and was won by Jonas Luetjen of Germany, who defeated Latvian Davis Cupper Martins Podzus in the final.

Some of the past competitors at the USTA Vero Beach Futures have gone on to succeed at the highest levels of professional tennis, winning major singles and doubles titles, Olympic medals and Davis Cup championships and earning No. 1 world rankings. Andy Roddick, the 2003 U.S. Open champion who attained the world No. 1 ranking and helped the United States win the Davis Cup in 2007, competed in Vero Beach in 1999. Thomas Johansson of Sweden, who reached the second round of the Vero Beach Futures in 1995, won the Australian Open seven years later in 2002. Nicolas Massu, the 1998 singles runner-up in Vero Beach, won the singles and doubles gold medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, beating Fish in the gold medal singles match. Kyle Edmund, the 2013 champion in Vero Beach, helped Great Britain to the Davis Cup title in 2015. Other notable former competitors in Vero Beach include former world No. 2 Magnus Norman, former world No. 4 Tim Henman, 2016 Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic among others. Former Vero Beach competitors have combined to win 19 titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles at Grand Slam tournaments. Six former Vero Beach players have gone on to play Davis Cup for the United States – Roddick, Fish, Taylor Dent, Jared Palmer, Donald Young and Ryan Harrison.

 

"King of the Hill" at The Moorings Club, Vero Beach, Florida
“King of the Hill” at The Moorings Club, Vero Beach, Florida

At ease

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By Thomas Swick
swickt@bellsouth.net

The other day I visited the players’ realm of Arthur Ashe stadium and got an idea of how they kill time when they’re not killing tennis balls.

I walked across the red carpet leading to the players’ entrance and through an open gate into the players’ garden. Adirondack chairs, painted bright colors, lined the walkway, and the grass triangle was dotted was umbrellas and wooden lawn furniture. A bar occupied one corner – serving coffee and juices, I found on inspection – and a ping pong table stood in another.

The US Open

I entered the lobby of what looked like an upscale YMCA. To the left was a room where rackets were being strung by young men whose black T-shirts gave them the appearance of waiters. Stringing waiters. Words strung high across the wall in front of me read:

              I wanna waked up in the city that doesn’t sleep to find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap. If I can make it here, I’d make it anywhere. – Theme from New York, New York.

It reminded me of the words from Kipling’s If that are written above the players’ entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon:

               If you can meet with triumph and defeat/And treat those two imposters just the same.

The latter speaks of humility and perspective, the former of ambition and vanity. Grand Slams as indicators of national character.

I climbed the steps to the players’ lounge, which was like an enormous living room, or rather a half dozen living rooms rolled into one. There were chairs and tables and couches, most arrayed around a flat screen TV. There was not a seat without a view of a screen, and there was not a screen without a view of tennis. The one not showing CBS’s coverage of the Open was tuned the Tennis Channel’s replay of the tournament in Dubai. It would still have been a sad sight for the commentators, as all of the TVs were on mute.

I headed down a corridor with windows looking out onto a parking lot, and entered the players’ dining room. It was more grandiose than ours, but the menu looked to be similar – sandwiches, salads, burgers, pastas – if more extensive. Gilles Simon was just finishing his lunch, and I wondered if it’s harder for French players to give up alcohol.

Back in the lounge, I plopped down in a chair. A woman walked through with two small children, appearing as harried as any young mother. (Quite possibly more so.) Andrea Petkovic’s father looked as if he’d just played a five-setter, and eventually stretched out on the couch. People sat talking or texting; two played fussball. One woman – a non-player (and a non-Petkovic) – was reading a book. (Water for Elephants, in Portuguese.)

Numerous languages melded, though Slavic ones predominated, a situation unthinkable in the old Anglo-Hispanic world of Rosewall, Gonzales, Laver and Segura.

A magazine rack hung on the wall near the information desk. Of the ten slots, one was occupied by Inside Tennis, one by More, one by Fitness; the rest held copies of Better Homes or Traditional Home – two magazines that are probably as alluring to touring tennis pros as travel magazines are to the rest of the population.

Downstairs in the lobby, Andy Murray sat on a bench eating fusilli in tomato sauce, while in the string shop, Gilles Muller was racing a young woman to see who was faster at putting a grip on a racket. Out in the garden, Vera Zvonareva was kneeling on a towel and having her arms stretched by a trainer, two young men were competing at ping pong, Caroline Wozniacki’s parents were sitting quietly under an umbrella, and a camera crew was interviewing Oracene Price, mother of the Williams sisters. Feeling a little left out, I headed back to the scribes.