Mustangs reach tourney semis
Rahul Kamath knows he just has to be patient and play his game rather than allowing his opponent dictate the point.
The Downers Grove South junior won two of his three tennis matches to lead the co-host Mustangs to a fourth-place finish in the Benet/Downers Grove South Team Championship on Saturday.
The Mustangs topped Naperville North in their first-round meeting, making it the first time they've gotten to the tournament semifinals.
Kamath, a state qualifier last year, was on his way to a third victory when his patience wore thin.
At first it looked as though he was going to lose his first-round, first-singles match to the Huskies' Reid Mutscheler, who went ahead 4-1.
But Kamath took a five-minute break to gather his composure.
"If I try to rush myself I play my opponent's game and not my own," Kamath said. "If I do that, there's no way I can win. I just slowed everything down."
After his break Kamath won the next five games to take the set and then went on to win the match.
In his second match, against New Trier, Kamath had just the opposite experience.
"I had so much confidence after that first match," he said. "That I started strong and I won the first set 6-2. But then I broke down and lost the second set and the super-tiebreaker. I wasn't doing the fundamentals right."
"Rahul is one of the most competitive and talented kids I've ever coached," said Downers Grove South coach Peter Freischlag. "He's as fast as you can get. As he said, he just has to learn to dictate the match rather than waiting for other people to make mistakes."
New Trier won the first two rounds of the team tournament (two singles and three doubles) by defeating West Aurora and Downers Grove South 5-0, then topped Deerfield 4-1 in the finals.
Downers Grove South was swept in the doubles flights by Deerfield 3-2 in the third-place contest.
The Mustangs' singles victories were by Kamath and Matt Artus, the second win of the day for both.
"This is as good a team as we've put out on the court for a long time," Freischlag said. "We're young and we're good. We just have to start believing in that."
Naperville North, led by a perfect 3-for-3 day by first-doubles Matt Walters and Yasufumi Terada, recovered from its loss to the Mustangs and went on to top West Aurora and then Moline in the fifth-place match.
Benet lost in the first round to Deerfield, in the second round to Moline and then finished with a victory over West Aurora for seventh place.
"This tournament provides great competition early in the season," said Michael Hand, coach of co-host Benet. "For ranked teams like New Trier, Deerfield and Barrington it provides a good measuring stick for their team. It's also a measuring stick for us at our level. It gives our kids the chance to play against top teams and realize that they're not that far away from those players."