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May 29, 2007

High school tennis crowns individual champions

Four days, six victories, two championships – not a bad week’s work for South Kingstown’s Kyle Burke.

Burke, the sophomore whose victory at first singles helped South Kingstown win its ninth consecutive state team title on Saturday, completed his three-day run to the Interscholastic League state singles championship yesterday with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Wheeler freshman Jesse Frieder in the title match at Slater Park.

The title-match victory was Burke’s fifth consecutive straight sets triumph in the three-day singles tournament after he had battled to a three-set victory in the first singles match of the team championship on Saturday.

“I’m dead. I’m going to take a week off,” said an exhausted, but jubilant Burke.

Burke, the tournament’s top seeded player, needed all his energy - and pen-point placements – to close out the match in straight sets after Frieder came within a game of evening the match in the second set.

After dropping the 6-2 decision in the first set and falling behind 2-0 in the second set Frieder, the tourney’s second seed, won four straight games. Burke came back and won the seventh game of the set, but then Frieder held serve for a 5-3 lead.

That put Burke on the verge of being pushing into a third set, but then the Rebels star suddenly turned the tide back in his favor with some crafty shot-making.

He held serve to cut the deficit to 5-4 then deadlocked the set at 5-5 by breaking Frieder’s serve at love. He then closed out the match by taking the next two games after both games had been 30-30.

From the outset, it was obvious Burke felt finesse rather than power was the best route to the title. He continually kept Frieder off balance by mixing his straight forehands with some high-looping forehands, top-spin lobs and wide-angle, slice backhands.

“I knew I needed to change the pace,” said Burke. “He (Frieder) has an amazing ground game so I thought I won’t play his game. He beat my brother in a tough match where they were just pounding away. I saw that he’s too tough there so I just switched it up and tried something different. It’s not really my game to loop it, but I though I would give it a try because he was beating me on the flat balls.”

Frieder finished the day with a few more winners than Burke, but he also made considerably more errors than the champion. Several of Frieder’s unforced miscues, however, were created by Burke’s outstanding defensive play. Time after time Burke would send Frieder back to the backline with a deep lob after he had made a sensational backhanded save of a Frieder forehand blast deep into the corner.

Burke’s backhanded slices also took Frieder out of his comfort zone, especially in the first set when Burke jumped out to a 3-0 and 5-1 leads.

“On the short ones I was trying to draw him in so I could tire him out and on the deep ones I was just trying to change-up the pace and make it a little different for him,” Burke offered about his slicing backhands.

“Kyle is so tough, for a sophomore he doesn’t make many errors,” said South Kingstown coach Andy Carr. “He changes his angles, he changes his speeds. It’s tough to get under his skin. You really have to beat him, you have to outplay him and that’s tough to do.”

South Kingstown completed a sweep of the major schoolboy titles this season as the Rebels duo of Mike Hartley and Jake deMesquita captured the state doubles title yesterday with a 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 victory over Hendricken’s Chris Toegemann and Mike Fallone.

Hartley and deMesquita also had given South Kingstown one of its five points in Saturday’s team championship match against Barrington with a victory at first doubles.

--JOHN GILLOOLY

Posted by Corey Bourassa  at 7:51 PM to High School | Permalink

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