LITTLE ROCK — A good breakfast can only take you so far.
Memphis’ Catherine Harrison fueled up before her match with Whitney Kay in the final of the USTA girls Southern Closed 18s Friday at the Burns Park Tennis Center in North Little Rock. It worked too, with Harrison winning 6-4, 7-6 (6-3).
Yet despite the good meal, Harrison was running on fumes by the end of the match.
“There wasn’t much waffle left in my tank,” Harrison said with a grin.
Seemingly in control from the start of the first set, Harrison was put back on her heels in a hurry. Trailing 5-2 in thesecond set, Kay won the next three games and brought the fight to Harrison.
“Whitney’s really good, and I’ve never beaten her before,” Harrison said. “I was expecting a really tough match. I wasn’t really surprised to be up 5-2, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy. When I got up 5-2, I kind of lost focus and thought she was going to roll over.”
But Kay, of Alpharetta, Ga., wasn’t going anywhere. Harrison gutted out a long game to go up 6-5, but Kay came back again to force the tiebreaker.
Harrison said if it looked like Kay was surging as she was fading, that’s because she was.
“I was struggling with my fitness those games,” Harrisonsaid. “I was starting to die, and she was in better shape than I was. I was trying to end points quickly, but she was just keeping the ball in play and getting to everything.”
Losing the tiebreaker technically wouldn’t have spelled the end for Harrison, but she admitted her chances of taking a third set would have been slim. Along with her fatigue, what little cloud cover that helped shade the players ended at noon, right as the tiebreaker began.
“There were some of those thoughts, I’m not going to lie,” Harrison said. “I mean, I was just giving it my all in that second set. I would have tried my hardest in the third set, but I really don’t know. I think she definitely had the edge.”
Sports, Pages 26 on 06/26/2010