Mardy Fish pro tennis event: Ryan Haviland, 43, keeping Father Time at bay
VERO BEACH – No one defeats Father Time. Some are able to keep the old timekeeper at bay.
Tom Brady, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, won the last of his seven Super Bowls with the Tampa Bay Bucs at 43. Hockey great Jaromir Jagr played all 82 games for the Florida Panthers at 44 and was able to notch 46 points with 16 goals.
But singles tennis is far more aerobically strenuous, so it’s unheard of for 40-somethings to truly challenge the younger generation of today.
Don’t tell that to Ryan Haviland, the 43-year-old owner/operator of a tennis academy in Greenville, S.C., where he oversees about 120 junior tennis players. However, this week, Haviland, a former All-American at Stanford who was mentioned in the same breath as elite American juniors such as Mardy Fish and Andy Roddick, gave players half his age a run for their money.
Haviland, once ranked 516 in 2004 before a series of injuries derailed a promising career, made it through two rounds of qualifying and then dispatched fellow qualifier, 23-year-old, 898th-ranked Miguel Angel Cabrera of Chile in three grueling sets on Wednesday in the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation $15,000 ITF Futures tournament.
He became the second oldest player currently competing in the ATP to record a ranking point, behind 46-year-old Toshihide Matsui (ranked 1521) of Japan with two points.
“I spoke to Mardy, who’s a year younger than Ryan, on the phone and when he heard he was in the draw, he couldn’t believe it. But he was impressed,’’ smiled Tom Fish, the tournament director of this event.
Haviland has undergone 11 surgeries, including five on each knee and another on his elbow, but he has never lost that burning desire to compete. To put his appearance here in perspective, Haviland won the Fish doubles title 21 years ago this week. And five teenagers competed Thursday.
“I don’t know if the competitive bug ever gets out of you,’’ Haviland said. “It’s a challenge and as you get older, you’re supposed to challenge yourself, doing new things, so coming to play people half my age is a blast.”
However, on Thursday, the Cinderella slipper didn’t fit as Haviland, who hadn’t played a tournament in nearly 11 months while nursing Plantar fasciitis, was stopped 7-6 (5), 6-4 to 20-year-old, third seed Victor Lilov of Delray Beach in the round-of-16.
Haviland was clearly rusty, hitting short approach shots that Lilov easily passed him with, as well as missing return of serves he usually crushes. Although he broke Lilov at 4-5 to eventually force a first-set tiebreaker, Haviland bricked an overhead sitter at 4-4. Then at 5-6, set point in the breaker, he missed a lunging forehand volley by an inch.
Haviland and Lilov held serve until 4-5 in the second set when the normally reliable server tossed in two double faults before ending the taut match when his two-hand backhand drifted wide after a protracted baseline rally.
“That’s to be expected after 10 months off,’’ said Haviland, who earned a wild card into the Fish field last year by winning the wild-card tournament, but lost in the first round. “I was incredibly streaky while he was more or less solid the whole time. The bottom line is I can’t be too disappointed. Maybe in a month or two when I played 3-to-4 tournaments, hopefully you won’t see this sloppiness.”
Lilov, who plays for America holds three citizenships, including Bulgaria and Canada where he was born. He was impressed with Haviland, who’s exactly the same age as his coach Rudy Diaz, owner of Developmental Tennis Institute in Miramar.
“I didn’t underestimate him. If I did, I would’ve lost,’’ said Lilov, a Junior Wimbledon finalist in 2021 who’s seeking his first title. “Eleven surgeries. I can only say that’s inspirational, awesome that he’s still coming out here competing. He doesn’t need it, but he finds the joy in competing.”
Playing for his, “kids’’, also serves as motivation for Haviland, who when reasonably healthy in 2017, tested up-and-coming Americans, including Michael Mmoh (a career-best 81st last year), Tommy Paul (12th last year), and a 19-year-old Frances Tiafoe (10th last year), who needed a third-set tiebreaker to edge him in a 2016 Cary (NC) Challenger.
“As a coach the biggest motivation is that my kids are impressed,’’ Haviland said. “They can trust me and see that I’m not just telling them what to do. … Tennis is a sneaky way of staying fit and if you could still play at a pretty high level you can’t play [USTA] leagues, so you have to come out and play the young kids. As long as my body will let me do it, I have no intention of stopping.”
As long as I feel good and can still play; I love the challenge.”
His next stop is at the ITF $15K in Orange Park on Monday. Why quit? After all, at 36-plus Novak Djokovic is the oldest No. 1 ranked singles player since the Open Era began in 1968, and India’s Rohan Bopanna became the oldest No. 1 ranked doubles player after winning the Australian Open in January at the ripe old age of 43.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Mardy Fish pro tennis: Ryan Haviland, 43, keeping Father Time at bay
