Tournament News | Gold Balls in Seattle

Johann: This will be a bit challenging, but in just one word, how would you describe the feeling of bringing home a gold ball? What does this mean to each of you?

Alan: I guess maybe “validation” I would say. You know there’s a lot of time spent, a lot of years playing, you know, these tournaments, and just playing in general and it was really cool to work towards this. It’s something I think we’ve known was possible. Jevin and I haven’t known each other for that long… [about] like five years. Yeah. But, you know, we started playing these doubles [events] together at the same age and started to think, we can do this. It feels good to have worked up to this point.

Jevin: Feeling young again. That could be all right. You know when you get older you feel like you’re retiring from all those fun things that you do as a kid. And what’s so fun about tennis is that you get to have those goals again. You get to have the joy of winning, the despair of losing, the nervousness of getting ready for the match. Those are all super fun and some of the best memories as a kid that I had.

With other sports it kind of has to end. If you play football, I don’t know if many people our age are playing football or many of the sports, but tennis, you can continually get better even when your body degrades and it gives you something to work towards, to build discipline into your daily routine that you may not do if you didn’t, because you’ve got the tournament coming up and so you get to feel young again. It’s just a lot of fun. I agree with Alan. It is a sort of validation of the work that you put in because it is work, but it’s fun work. 

Johann: What was the journey like for you guys to be able to even qualify to get to go to this tournament, which was where again?

Alan: This was in Florida.

Jevin: Oh that’s right. Okay. Right. Yeah. And some of these tournaments, like we both were fortunate enough to play on the US team and that does require a qualification. You have to perform well at these kinds of tournaments. And so there is an element of having to qualify. And I think for these kinds of things, you can’t come unprepared because all the players have either played, you know, college or pro, some of them, people that are, that understand the game really well.

Alan: So if you don’t come prepared, and you, just kind of not pay attention for a couple of games or etcetera, whatever, you’re kind of done. So that’s the level of play. It’s really high level play.

Johann: What was the hardest match you guys had to play there to to win this title?

Alan: It’s probably Chris [in the semis].

Jevin: Yeah. They were the number one seed in the semis. Yeah. Yeah. You know what, they won it before.

Alan: Yeah, we played a team of two Chris’s – Christopher Lee and Christian, who have played together for like forever. It seems like they’re always playing and always in the same tournaments. And, and they just know each other’s game so well. They’ve been playing for so long together. I haven’t actually, I hadn’t seen them at this particular tournament before. I didn’t play last year. But, yeah, we had never played them before in any other tournaments. So it was fun to, you know, play to see. We’ve seen a lot of, you know, it came down 2 to 3 sets. But, you know, we pulled it off.

Jevin: Right. Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, the finals was very tough, too. I mean, they’re all tough, actually. I mean, every match at these level one tournaments, you don’t run into a lot of people that are inexperienced sometimes, but even they’re ready to play as they’re showing up for that kind of tournament and taking the effort. But yeah, the finals of course, is very, it’s all tough.

Johann: You guys said you had been playing together not all that long. So, from a play style perspective, how do you guys complement each other? Like, how do you guys find your on-court chemistry? What’s that like?

Jevin: Well Alan’s got the most amazing touch. If anyone sees him play and you know he’s got amazing touch. He’s got the one hander so he can reach and take shots that you can’t take with the two hander that I have. Also, you know, for us, kind of combining the different strengths that we have, we have to have to talk through a lot of these strategies. So is everyone at all levels of tennis. If you’re playing it well, you are strategizing with your partner against your opponents because you need to figure out, okay, who’s going to go back if you’re lobbed, who’s going to step in when they hit the drop, or to the right, or who is, you know, how are we going to serve? How are you going to turn? And those just come from playing with each other and that’s where the game is. It’s so much fun as well.

Alan: Yeah. And Jevin’s game, he’s just so amazingly steady and solid from the baseline. That was like, from his returns and just, you know, duking it out for the baseline is amazing. And what’s incredible is that over the last few years, his net game is now leveled up to be equivalent to his baseline game. So, I mean, it’s such a force. So, it’s continually evolving, you know, for both of us. And then working together to try to figure out the best way to communicate on court and, you know, strategize like Jevin said against every opponent so differently.