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Boys Tennis: a Year Older and Wiser

Alex Weseley, seen above a year ago, missed East Hampton’s first three matches but was expected back this week. He and Jaedon Glasstein are the team’s top doubles pairing.
Alex Weseley, seen above a year ago, missed East Hampton’s first three matches but was expected back this week. He and Jaedon Glasstein are the team’s top doubles pairing.
Jack Graves
Bonackers in a showdown with tough Half Hollow Hills East
By
Jack Graves

Wet courts caused Friday’s scheduled boys tennis nonleaguer with Half Hollow Hills East, one of the top teams in the county, to be postponed until yesterday, but Kevin McConville, East Hampton High’s coach, said during a conversation Saturday that he and his players were very much looking forward to it.

“It should be really good,” the coach said of the showdown, inasmuch as going into it both teams had done similarly well versus other top-notch teams, namely Half Hollow Hills West and Westhampton Beach, East Hampton’s archrival in league play.

Hills East and the Bonackers each defeated Hills West 4-3. East Hampton bageled Westhampton 7-0; Hills East defeated the Hurricanes 6-1. 

East Hampton, in another recent match, also shut out Shoreham-Wading River, a league foe, but the 7-0 win over Westhampton was harder to come by.

Jonny De Groot, the Bridgehampton senior who has a booming serve and a variety of shots, enabled the Bonackers to complete the rout at home on March 19 by outlasting Westhampton’s number-one, Josh Kaplan, 10-7 in a super tiebreaker that came about after each of them had won a set.

McConville said the strategy employed against Kaplan, a very good baseliner with a punishing forehand, was to take him out of his comfort zone with feathered shots low to his weaker side whenever the opportunity arose, either off second serves or relatively early in rallies.

That kind of play served De Groot well in the first set, although, in the second, after Kaplan had put a couple of successful shots at his feet, De Groot — whose hard, high-kicking serve into the body (“just one of the serves he has”) gave Kaplan trouble all afternoon — tended to get sucked into long rallies in the second set. 

In general, though, McConville said his four singles players — De Groot, Ravi MacGurn, Luke Louchheim, and Max Astilean — were, when faced with strong baseliners, changing it up very well, their more varied games accounting in large part for the team’s early success.

It was Astilean, an eighth grader who was a Ross Tennis Academy student last year, who caught McConville’s eye in the season-opening match at Hills West. 

“It was Max’s first varsity match, and he was so impressive,” McConville said. “He had the clinching win. He was down 4-1 in the first set. I walked over and got him settled down. He was going for too much and missing. After that, he took the other kid’s backhand apart, that being his weaker side, and the other kid started breaking down, and lost confidence. Max took him apart tactically. He wound up winning the first set 6-4, and the second 6-4.”

De Groot’s was the only match to go the whole way versus Westhampton as MacGurn, Louchheim, and Astilean all won in straight sets. 

The doubles teams, despite the absence of Alex Weseley, who, with Jaedon Glasstein, is at the top of the duo heap, also did well in the Westhampton match. Glasstein and Jamie Fairchild, at one, won 6-3, 6-3, Brad Drubych and Matthew McGovern, at two, won 4-6, 6-0, 6-2, and Miles Clark and Jackson LaRose won 6-2, 6-2 at three.

“It’s been a great advantage having the whole team back,” said McConville. “Everyone’s improved; everyone’s a year older and a year wiser. In doubles, we’ve been trying to be aggressive, to get two to the net rather than have one stay at the baseline and the other stand statue-like at the net. They were getting it last year, but their overheads weren’t as good as they are this year, nor were their putaways as good. They’re more in sync this year, their positioning is better — they’re getting it.”

Interestingly, Weseley was missing from East Hampton’s first three matches, all, as aforesaid, wins. He was to have been back in the lineup yesterday. 

It had been “serendipitous,” McConville said, that Astilean had beaten Glasstein, who shared fourth singles last season with Drubych, in a recent ladder match. With his big serve and strong groundstrokes, Glasstein has further strengthened East Hampton’s doubles lineup. Just about all of his doubles players were “interchangeable,” McConville added.

Back to singles, “Jonny is as good as you’ll see in the transition game, and that’s been good for Ravi, Luke, and Max to see, all of them being good groundstrokers. Bringing these kids up to the net who don’t want to come up to the net has been hugely helpful.”

MacGurn had been winning many points with topspun forehands hit to his opponent’s backhand side, and Louchheim this year had added topspin to his forehand, the coach said. “He’s no longer just blasting it flat and deep. I’ve been preaching variety to Luke too. Every day we practice the transition game.”

“They all have cool heads,” McConville agreed. “They have just the right mentality to be good, to stick with the game plan, and to execute — they’re relentless.”


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