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June 8, 2007

Nygaard back, Kiraly, Wong better
Karch and Kevin have night fun at Nygaard's expense
By Monique Moyal / AVP.com

ATLANTA — Disputed calls, players rebounding from injury and more scary rain
storms were only a few of the highlights during Friday's men's main draw
action.

Even though last weekend's Tropical Storm Barry pelted the Tampa Open with
more severe conditions, some players were happy to be back in today's rain,
thunder and lightning. Players, fans, crew and staff were all forced to wait
out the storm for nearly an hour in the covered parking garage behind center
stage, as sirens blared and the premises were evacuated.

No one welcomed the sight more so than Jeff Nygaard, who is back playing
after taking two weeks off to nurse his bicep after underoing a surgical
procedure for melanoma.

"I got lucky and I know I got lucky, so I'm not gonna take anything away
from that fact," Nygaard said. "I'm just happy to be out here, being able to
do what I'm on this planet to do."

A simple cliché arguably never had such a profound meaning.

In their first game of the day, Nygaard and partner Dax Holdren took a
come-from-behind, 19-21, 21-17, 25-23 decision against No. 12 Nick Lucena
and Will Strickland. Holdren and Nygaard won the match on their seventh
matchpoint, while holding off Lucena and Strickland four times.

"The only thing that I feel is I've been out for two weeks and my rhythm is
off," said Nygaard of struggling to put away the match. "My physical
condition is a little off because I was doing beach workouts all day every
day just to stay in shape. I'm not there — I started from zero coming back
from Turkey, and now I feel like I'm coming back from 20 (percent) to come
back for this one.

"There were a lot of plays where ordinarily I'd be more comfortable on where
I just wasn't."

Not even the night game was free of the rainy conditions, but that didn't
stop No. 4 Karch Kiraly and Kevin Wong from continuing their tear after
finishing second last weekend. Although Holdren and Nygaard fell in that
match (21-18, 22-20), they aren't out yet. They'll have to try their luck
from the contender's bracket on Saturday.

Partners Hans Stolfus and local boy Ty Loomis, who both sat out the last two
tournaments, were also back in the mix, loving every minute of the confusion
spawned by the beating solar rays and heavy wind and rain.

Although Stein Metzger and Mike Lambert haven't been injured lately, it is
safe to say they're back nursing their mental games.

"Right now we're in a little bit of a mental vortex because we've had so
many bad finishes," Metzger said. "We're trying to overturn every stone and
think of what's the reason why we're having such a poor start to this
season, and so it can really get to you. I'd say, by now, it's 100 percent
mental, and that's really what we're focusing on."

Another team that has not been playing up to par lately is the partnership
of Albert Hannemann and Ed Ratledge. They actually beat Metzger and Lambert
in Dallas but were unable to repeat that feat and fell, 21-17, 21-13, to
land in the contender's bracket for the first time on Friday.

They leave this weekend in 17th place after falling to No. 13 John Mayer and
Scott Wong in the contender's bracket. But it was in their first game, when
they faced 19th-seeded Brent Doble and Ryan Mariano that Hannemann and
Ratledge displayed what they are capable of doing together.

Hannemann and Ratledge ended up losing the first game in the set to
Doble-Mariano on a disputed call as to who actually touched the ball last.
Hannemann insisted that he did not before it fell out, but the referee ruled
in favor of Doble and Mariano. From there they went on to rattle off the
next two sets and take the match.

"I respect these referees and I know they have a hard job, but every once in
a while they'll miss a call that's obvious to everybody but them," said
Hannemann. "That call got us a lot more fired up, so we crushed them in the
second game and then got a lot of fire for the third. So maybe I should
thank the ref for that call."

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