Top seed reaches the final

Tennis tournaments such as this weekend’s 48th annual Central Virginia Invitational (CVITT) at Oakwood Country Club are basically battles of the fittest.

Kevin Cope of Rehab Associates of Central Virginia, the tournament’s trainer, compares competing in them to running in a marathon, with a player’s durability and endurance just as important as his talent and technique.

That’s especially true in 90-degree-plus heat, as it has been this week, and playing on clay, where points tend to last longer than on hard-court surfaces.

After winning his first two matches, Treat Huey, the No. 2-seeded singles player at Virginia and in the CVITT men’s open division, pulled out of Saturday’s semifinal singles and doubles matches with a severely strained hamstring, suffered initially in Thursday’s first round.

“He felt it pull when he was sliding and after playing two matches in a row (Friday), in singles and doubles, it was questionable whether he could come back for today,” Cope said.

After returning to Charlottesville and consulting with his personal trainer, Huey opted not to risk a more severe injury, which Cope considered wise.

His withdrawal sent Radford’s No. 1 player Martin Sayer, seeded sixth, into today’s 12:30 p.m. final against top-seeded Brett Ross, the 2006 champion. For the second consecutive day, Ross lost his first set before rallying to win in three, this time by a 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 count over Virginia Tech’s No. 1 player, Albert Larregola of Spain, who suffered leg cramps.

Trailing 2-1 in the third set, Larregola took an injury timeout and called on Cope to tend to him, but there wasn’t much he could do.

“Once you start getting dehydrated, you can’t play catch-up on the court,” Cope said. “It’s too late at that point. They’re done.”

Larregola, who hits with a European-sounding grunt, normally jumps into his groundstrokes to add power and topspin. But by the middle of the third set, he was playing flat-footed, and cursing in English.

“He was tanking it,” Cope said. “Brett made a good comeback and made him work for it.”

Ross, who beat Larregola in straight sets as a senior at Wake Forest when Larregola was a freshman, didn’t cut him any slack in the second and third sets after losing the first decisively.

“I picked up my game a little bit and started hitting the ball a little bit better and slowly started to break him down a bit physically,” Ross said. “After we started the third set, I could tell he was starting to get tired.”

Ross, who lives in Georgia and prefers playing in hot and humid weather, had plenty of reserve power to draw on, chasing down Larregola’s cross-court forehands that stretched him wide and drop shots that drew him to the net.

“I just tried to dig out the tough points,” Ross said, noting his opponent was equally dangerous from both sides. “I felt like in the third set, if I just kept running them down and if I won the point, it was good, but if I lost the point I was still showing him that I had a lot of energy left.”

“He was tougher than me,” Larregola added.

Like Sayer in singles, Larregola and his doubles partner, Tech teammate Ignaci Roca, advanced with a walkover to today’s men’s open doubles final after Huey and UVa teammate Ted Angelinos were forced to default. They will meet three-time CVITT champions Carl Clark and Trevor Spracklin, who defeated Ross and Jason Pinsky.

“It was pretty cut and dry, chop-chop,” Ross said of Saturday’s 6-4, 6-4 semifinal setback.

Spracklin, the 2004 men’s open singles champion, got his first eight serves in, and they were often impossible to return.

“He was dropping bombs out there,” Ross said of Spracklin’s serve. “We got a little bit of rhythm going, but …” trailing 3-0 in the first set and 5-1 in the second, it was too little, too late.

“They played really textbook doubles,” Ross said, “and that cut down the margin of error for us.”

Clark and Spracklin first teamed up at the CVITT after Spracklin graduated from William & Mary in 2001.

“We’re a combination of youthful power and solid veteran (experience),” said Clark, 41, who played on a European pro tour after graduating from Virginia in 1989 as the No. 1 singles and doubles player. He is now head pro at Country Club of Virginia in Richmond.

With semifinal wins this morning, Clark and Oakwood’s club pro Mark Vines would meet in the men’s 35 division final. Vines, seeded second, played No. 1-seed Clark in the Virginia State Championship in Richmond in 1990.

“I was lucky enough to beat him 7-5 in the third set,” Vines said. “Carl has improved his game like nobody’s business since then.

“He’s beaten the national 40s champion in straight sets and now he’s playing high-level college players and spanking them.”