A Look Back at 1984 Kalamazoo Nationals
As you can see from the draws I'm posting below, I didn't have access to the official final drawsheet at the time, so I filled in the results from the last one I had. My archive of programs and drawsheets goes back to 1973, and I have a few before that as well. So my apologies for the look of the draws, but just getting these out on the internet seemed worthwhile.
Ricky Brown won the 18s title that year, three years after his brother Jimmy had won it. Here are the 16 seeds that year in the 128-player draw, along with their highest ATP ranking:
1. Luke Jensen, 168
2. Brad Pearce, 71
3. Robbie Weiss, 85
4. Richey Reneberg, 20
5. Patrick McEnroe, 28
6. Dan Nahirny, 679
7. Jay Berger, 7
8. Scott Melville, 182
9. Tim Trigueiro, 364
10. Ricky Brown, 215
11. Jeff Hersh, 510
12. Buff Farrow, 224
13. Joey Blake, 313
14. Paul Koscielski, 254
15. Mike Velasquez, 974
16. Craig Johnson, 318
Berger, the former USTA Head of Men's Tennis, lost in the first round to current USTA president Patrick Galbraith, but the following year he won the tournament. With the US Open wild card he received in 1985, Berger advanced all the way to the fourth round, where he lost to No. 7 seed Yannick Noah 6-7, 6-2, 6-3, 6-1.
If you prefer to look at the pdf I created (it might be a lot easier to read), it is available here as an Adobe PDF, with both 16s and 18s singles draws in that document. In a separate document, I've included contestant list from that year. You might think that Berger would claim the best ATP ranking of any of the participants that year, but if you look closely, you'll see one Pete Sampras, who turned 14 during the tournament, competing in the 16s division. Sampras lost in the second round to No. 8 seed TJ Middleton, but he did not go unnoticed at the time, because the score was 6-7, 6-4, 18-16, with no tiebreaker then played in the third set. Current Navy men's head coach Chris Garner, the top seed, won the 16s title that year.
2 comments:
And basically everyone played college tennis in those days. Looking at the 16s draw, it struck me how many ended up as Bulldawgs in Athens. 3 of the 4 semifinalists: Garner, Childs and for a short time Murphy Jensen. Then you also had Enochs, Middleton and Parker who were all seeded. Perhaps the strangest result. How did #5 Parker lose 1&0 in the 2nd round? In the 18s, I think everyone went to college except Ricky Brown.
If memory serves me correctly, Al Parker was having back issues at that time. He went on to have a stellar career at UGA.
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