By Rich Brown
rbrown@joplinglobe.com
The courts were empty except for one solitary figure.
Jean-Yves Aubone, head bowed and shirtless, found it difficult to move ... even after everyone else had left the outdoor arena at Millennium Tennis and Fitness Club.
That scene, courtesy of a drained but victorious young athlete from Florida, summed up a long Saturday afternoon for the final four players in the USTA Freeman $10,000 Futures Tournament.
It was a scorcher of a day for the singles semifinals with a third set required to decide both outcomes and provide tickets to the championship match at 11 a.m. today.
Aubone’s 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 win against University of Arkansas standout Blake Strode secured his. That match followed a remarkable comeback victory by Tigran Martirosyan the only seeded player left in the tourney at No. 7. Martirosyan roared back from a 6-2 opening-set loss to baffle Travis Helgeson 6-0 in the second set and close out the match 7-6 on a 7-4 tiebreaker.
Aubone, a 20-year-old from Miami, was not ranked high enough to get into the tournament. But he was permitted to play on a special exemption by the USTA, largely because he won the previous Futures tournament in Peoria, Ill. And for the second straight week, the No. 1 Florida State player finds himself in the final among a group of talented young professionals and top college players.
Aubone’s encounter with Strode was a battle of hard-hit groundstrokes with neither player getting an edge until the 11th game of the first set when the Floridian cashed in on an overhead smash to end the game and take the first service break of the set. Aubone went on to hold his serve and close it out at 7-5.
The second set was a different story. Strode opened by breaking Aubone’s serve and added another break in the eighth game before serving out at 6-3.
“He was controlling the points very well with his serve and he hit the big volleys where he just seemed like he was going for everything,” said Aubone, who was ranked 13th in the nation as a sophomore last season. “I got away from being aggressive in the second set and I let him take control on my serve, as well.”
Strode broke serve to open the third set and moved to a 2-0 lead before Aubone began to assert himself.
“Finally, in the third set I realized I cannot let him take control,” Aubone said. “Before, I had not been recognizing my opportunities but now I was looking more for an opportunity to put him on the run and come into the net and that was a big change for me.”
After trailing 0-2, Aubone won the next five games in a row and went on to close out the match at 6-3.
The third set for Martirosyan and Helgeson proved a little more tense. The 25-year-old Armenian, who played college tennis at Loyola Marymount and Kentucky, broke Helgeson’s serve in the fourth game to jump out to a 4-1 lead. With Martirosyan leading 5-3, Helgeson broke back and then held his serve to knot the score at 5-all.
After serving a love game for a 6-5 lead, Martirosyan actually had a match point on Helgeson’s serve before the Kansas Citian held on to put the set into a tiebreaker.
“I had that match point and I had a little letdown but I tried not to let that affect me,” Martirosyan said. “I knew after getting beat 6-0 that he was going to play his butt off.”
Martirosyan, who lives in Boston but whose family still lives in Armenia, jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the tiebreaker before Helgeson came back to tie it a 3-all. With the score deadlocked at 4-all, Martirosyan won the final three points, beginning with a service ace.
