TENNIS / DANA HADDAD : In His Defense of City Title, Huerta Doesn’t Need Excuses

On Monday, he said he was sleepy. On Wednesday, he complained that he was unable to return his opponent’s first serve.

Rafael Huerta wasn’t making excuses for losing, however. Huerta seldom loses.

Huerta, 18, a senior at Chatsworth High, is 27-0 this season and today will take the court to defend his 1992 singles championship in the City Section individual tennis tournament.

Huerta openly airs concern about today’s 2 p.m. match against Arthur Tombakian of Marshall at The Racquet Centre of Universal City. “I don’t want to let him get into a rhythm,” said Huerta of Tombakian, whom he beat twice as a freshman but hasn’t played since. “I want him to play my game.”

Huerta is worried a semester’s worth of fun will catch up to him today.

There was that spring break trip to his native Mexico in April and the Chatsworth student fashion show last week, in which he was one of the featured models.

The senior prom last weekend took a lot out of him. That was an all-night affair from which he was still recovering, he said, when he defeated Venice’s Ryan Ing, 6-3, 6-3, Monday.

“I’ve got senioritis,” Huerta confessed. “You know. . . . been partying. My senior year. I have so much going on right now. . . .”

He wiped a towel across his face--deeply tanned from long afternoons in the sun. He ran his fingers through his black hair--long on top and sheared on the sides and back. Then he grinned coyly.

“I’ll have to hit some balls to get ready for Friday,” he said, almost whispering.

Huerta is a sinewy, 5-foot-6 glider on a tennis court who hides his deceptively powerful body behind oversized T-shirts and baggy surfer shorts.

He lulls opponents with his smoothness. Sideline to sideline, baseline to net, he never stops moving on the court, but at no time does Huerta appear to exert himself. Never does he appear to chase a difficult ball. He just arrives before the second bounce.

But after brilliant shots and easy victories, Huerta worries about his “game”--exhibiting a soft-spoken, woe-is-me attitude that has subtly worked its way into his mental arsenal. He’ll tell you he’s not playing good tennis.

“Not good at all,” he said Wednesday, in fact, while idly plucking the strings of his racket. “My strokes are not there.”

Huerta talked about how he could not play Dvir Levy’s first serve only moments after he eliminated the Taft High senior, 6-4, 6-1, in the section semifinals. But while Levy wilted in the heat--the temperature reached 91 degrees and was no doubt hotter on the asphalt court--Huerta never complained about the weather. He grew up playing in the desert of Mexicali, Mexico.

“You’ve got to give credit to him,” Levy said. “He’s a great player.”

Chatsworth Coach Steve Berk said Huerta’s biggest critic is himself. But those feigned agonies Huerta displays after victories also give him a competitive edge.

“That’s what the top players have that the other players don’t have,” Berk said. “He needs a wake-up call. As the competition gets tougher, he gets tougher.”

And he rarely loses. Which is one reason Chatsworth named him co-athlete of the year last week along with baseball player Mark Lopez. Berk offers another reason:

“He won the City championship last year,” he said. “We’re assuming he’ll do that again.”

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Feat of clay: If she continues to play the way she did at last weekend’s Junior French Open, nobody will be setting limits on Northridge’s Meilen Tu. Her game has already gone international.

Tu, 15, wanted to take her tennis game to a new level and a new surface by playing clay-court tournaments. After her finishes in the Junior French Open, an 18-and-under event in Paris, Tu is flirting with world class.

Tu won only one singles match (against Tzu-Ting Weng of Taiwan, 6-3, 6-3) before falling in the round of 32. Laurence Courtios of Belgium, the woman who eliminated Tu, 6-4, 6-4, reached the final.

In doubles, Tu and Amanda Basica of Palos Verdes reached the quarterfinals, before losing, 6-3, 6-2, to a Belgian team--led by Courtios--that won the tournament title.

Tu was home from Paris when she got a call at 9 p.m. Sunday with instructions to join the U.S. Juniors team for another clay-court event in Germany. She was back on a jet at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Now Tu will be in Europe until June 28, not returning until she plays two additional clay tournaments in Italy and France.

“She loves it, because she wanted to play more on the clay and she wants to do better on that surface,” said Mei Tu, Meilen’s mother. “She’s a little upset about last weekend. She said she had a chance to win both matches (that she lost). But she played very good.”

Here’s the payoff for getting close at the Junior French Open. Tu was told after the tournament her world ranking in 18-and-under would jump from 91st to 30th or higher.

She immediately relayed the news to her mother.