TENNIS / WENDY WITHERSPOON : At 95 Pounds, Tu Makes Powerful Statement With National Title

Some kids are powerful beyond their size, poised beyond their years.

Consider 5-foot-3, 95-pound Meilen Tu, age 14.

Tu of Northridge won the girls’ 18-and-under clay court national tournament at the Racquet Club of Memphis on Saturday.

Seeded 16th, Tu upset the tournament’s top-seeded player, Maria Vento of Miami, Fla., 4-6, 6-1, 6-0, in the final. Vento is 18 years old.

Perhaps the least surprised was Tu.

“(Vento) is pretty much the same type of player that I am, but she started making some errors and I started taking control of the match in the second set,� Tu said.

It was Tu’s only match of the tournament that she was extended to three sets. In the first three rounds, she beat unseeded players easily, defeating Stacy Braunstein, 6-1, 6-1, Tracy Kotseos, 6-0, 6-1, and Lizl Coetsee 6-1, 6-1. Then, she worked her way through the top-seeded players.

In the fourth round, Tu defeated third-seeded Kristina Brandi of Bradenton, Fla., 6-4, 6-0. She downed unseeded Kristina Caparis of El Paso, Tex., 6-4, 6-0, in the quarterfinals before beating second-seeded Karin Miller of Bradenton, 6-1, 6-2, in the semifinals.

Pierre Mareschal, the former coach of the world’s 40th-ranked player, France’s Kathy Caversazio, coached Tu for the past six weeks at the Northridge Tennis Center. He had few doubts about her ability to succeed.

“She is very confident,� Mareschal said. “It’s one of her best weapons right now, her mind. She is very solid, mentally. She is definitely a fighter.�

Tu began playing tennis at the age of 6 under the guidance of Coach Craig Heinberg in Agoura. Tu now practices mostly with her sister Helen, who will be a senior on the UCLA women’s tennis team this season.

Tu, who was born in Los Angeles, speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese along with her parents, who are from Taiwan.

“I always work really hard,� Tu said. “My parents and my sister are mainly the people who give me support.�

Tu will be a sophomore at Granada Hills High this year. She is young for her class because she skipped third grade. Tu balances her tennis with her honors work in school, which is sometimes difficult.

School starts Aug. 19, but Tu will be in Tokyo, representing the United States along with two other girls in the World Junior Tennis championships, an international 14-and-under tournament Aug. 25-29.

Tu won two previous tournaments in the 18-and-under division this year. She won the Southern California Midwinter junior tournament in Santa Barbara in January and the Long Beach junior tournament in March.

“I would like to turn pro, but it’s all a matter of time and what I want to do and if I want to work hard,� she said matter-of-factly.

Add clay courts: Other area players also competed last week in clay court junior national tournaments, which were held at various sites across the country for different age groups. Ania Bleszynski of Thousand Oaks advanced to the fourth round in the girls’ 18 division before losing to fourth-seeded Katie Schlukebir of Kalamazoo, Mich., 6-0, 6-0.

In the girls’ 14 division at the Veltri Tennis Center in Plantation, Fla., 13th-seeded Jessica Kessler of Studio City lost in the second round to Jenny Miller of Savannah, Ga., 6-4, 6-2.

Erin Boisclair of Agoura also lost in the second round, falling to sixth-seeded Marica Spilca of Belen, N.M., 6-2, 6-1.

In the boys’ 16 division at the Bellemeade Country Club in Nashville, Derrik Pope of Ojai lost to Jakub Pietrowski of Huntington Beach, 6-3, 7-5, in the fifth round of the consolation bracket.

In the boys’ 14 division at the Lauderdale Tennis Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., twins Mike and Bob Bryan of Camarillo were scheduled to face each other in the third-place match.

The Bryans have a policy of not playing each other in tournaments, so Bob defaulted to Mike, Bob taking fourth place and Mike third. In doubles, the Bryan twins defended their clay court national title by defeating Joseph Gilbert of Fullerton and Geoff Abrams of Newport Beach, 6-2, 6-0, in the final.

King of the courts: Among the top names at the U.S. Tennis Assn. men’s 45 national championships at Westlake Tennis and Swim Club this month was Larry Rundle.

The name calls to mind a vintage era on courts--but not the tennis courts.

Rundle, a 47-year-old mortgage banker who lives in Westlake with his wife Chris and three children, is a volleyball legend. He and his partner, Henry Bergman, won one of the most famous beach volleyball matches of all time, the 1968 Manhattan Beach Open. Rundle also was a member of the 1965 national champion UCLA men’s volleyball team and played on the 1968 U.S. Olympic team.

Since retiring from volleyball in the early 1970s, Rundle picked up tennis. In the men’s 45 national championships, unseeded Rundle defeated 17th-seeded Alan Belgard of Encino, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, in the second round before losing to fifth-seeded Jeff Quinn of Modesto, 6-1, 6-4, in the third round.

“I’m kind of a local hack here at Westlake. I just love the thrill of going out and getting a little bit of competition,� Rundle said.

In volleyball, Rundle was anything but a hack.

Rundle led UCLA to a 24-2 record and the U.S. Volleyball Assn. national championship in 1965. The national title was the first for current Bruin Coach Al Scates.

In 1968, Rundle and Bergman played Ron Von Hagen and Ron Lang in the most epic of all finals of the 33-year-old Manhattan Beach Open. The teams had split six tournament championships that summer, setting up the Manhattan Beach Open as the showdown. They played past sunset, spectators trying to illuminate the battle with headlights from their parked cars. In the end, the light was too faint for Hagen-Lang. Rundle served some underhanded “high boys,� which arched out of sight, then landed in between his opponents because they couldn’t see it.

“I’m still friends with those guys. I really do consider that match a tie,� Rundle said.

Several years after the 1968 Olympics, in which the U.S. men’s volleyball team finished seventh, Rundle retired from volleyball.

“I had acquired a garage-full of trophies, but I realized I couldn’t buy food with the value of my trophies,� Rundle said.

In 1988, Rundle played No. 1 singles on a USTA 4.5 level league tennis team from Westlake that advanced to the national tournament in Tucson, Ariz. Rundle and partner Jim Pardee also won the men’s open doubles in the Conejo Valley Days tennis tournament this year.