Freedman, Spain nearly sweep tennis events
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HEIDELBERG, Germany — The field was small — just 11 players — for the 2012 U.S. Forces Europe tennis championships on Friday and Saturday, but that was a crowd compared to the population of the winner’s circle of this two-day event.
When it was time to hand out the winners’ trophies on Saturday, Landstuhl’s Brett Freedman and Alison Spain took six of the seven home with them by adding the men’s and mixed doubles championships to the men’s and women’s open trophies they collected Friday as the two-day U.S. Forces Europe tennis championships concluded Saturday on the clay courts of the Heidelberg Tennis Center.
Freedman and Spain, who each romped to their singles titles by winning one match each in straight sets on Friday, began Saturday’s play by dispatching Heidelberg’s Nate Strong and Sally Cotter 6-2, 6-0 for the mixed doubles crown. It was the lone match played in that category.
They then received permission to enter the men’s doubles, in spite of Spain’s obvious gender divergence from the category, and won that division, too. Freedman and Spain downed Stuttgart’s Michael Stuber and Michael Mejia 6-1, 6-1 in the semifinals before prevailing 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 over Heidelberg’s Metin Karaca and Kaiserslautern’s Marc Goulet in the title match.
“The draw was less than we expected,” said Freedman, who won the mixed doubles here last year with a different partner, “so they gave us permission to play men’s doubles, too.”
The decision gave Spain a chance to exercise her considerable tennis skills.
“Two of the women who had entered didn’t show up,” Spain said about her singles title match on Friday, which she won 6-0, 6-1 over Catherine Thompson of Heidelberg. “(Tourney director) Adel (Ishmail) called around and found a player who’d had a few lessons for me to play.”
Men’s doubles runners-up Karaca and Goulet can be forgiven for wishing Freedman had been forced to team with a different player. Spain displayed a superior return-of-service game and some quick reflexes at the net. Moreover, she was broken just once in seven service games.
That break came in the seventh game of the second set, which saw Spain double-fault for the only time all afternoon and make a rare error on a lob attempt that left the duo down 3-4.
Although Spain and Freedman immediately regained the break, Karaca and Goulet prevailed in the set mainly on the strength of Goulet’s assortment of drop shots.
“He had great touch,” said Freedman, who plays with a German club in Landstuhl. “You’ve got to have touch playing doubles on clay.”
No one’s touch, at least when it came to collecting trophies, was better than Freedman’s and Spain’s. They collected three each. The only other player to win a category was Kirk Madgic of Vicenza, who won the men’s masters title on Friday, also in straight sets.
