Newport Beach breaks into first place

One week ago, the Newport Beach Breakers were languishing in last

place. Five matches later, they are in a virtual tie for first.

The Breakers won their fifth consecutive match Sunday at Palisades

Tennis Club, upending Sacramento for the second consecutive night,

19-17, to join Springfield atop the Western Conference in the World

Team Tennis standings.

Newport Beach (6-4) is percentage points behind the Lasers (5-3),

who have played two less matches than the Breakers. Sacramento (5-5),

a game ahead of the Breakers going into the weekend, fell into third

place after the back-to-back losses.

Brian MacPhie continued his recent strong play with a 5-2 victory

in men’s singles over Daniel Nestor, one night after defeating Nestor

5-1 in Sacramento in a 22-16 Newport Beach victory.

But it was in men’s doubles that MacPhie really shined Sunday. He

combined with Josh Eagle to knock off one of the world’s top doubles

teams, Nestor and Mark Knowles, 5-2 to open the match, setting the

stage for Newport Beach’s victory.

In Saturday’s Breakers’ win, MacPhie and Eagle fell in a

tiebreaker to Nestor and Knowles in the fifth set of the match,

forcing overtime. But the Newport Beach duo were able to win the

first game over overtime to end the match.

Back at home, Newport Beach Coach Dick Leach went back to his

strategy of finishing the match with women’s singles and Maria

Sharapova. The 16-year-old Russian entered play Sunday ranked second

in World Team Tennis in women’s singles and that raking will only

improve with a 5-3 victory over Ally Baker, which ended the Breakers’

fifth straight win.

The winning streak comes on the heels of a three-game losing

streak that saw Newport Beach fall into the basement of the Western

Conference.

But as the team became acclimated with one another, the turnaround

began.

The Breakers’ only losses on Sunday came in mixed doubles and

women’s doubles. Elena Likhovtseva and Knowles defeated Sharapova and

Eagle in the former and Likhovtseva and Baker defeated Sharapova and

Eva Dyrberg in the latter, both by a score of 5-2.

On Saturday, Sharapova routed Likhovtseva 5-0 in women’s singles

and MacPhie’s rout of Nestor led to the Breakers’ victory. Newport

Beach actually lost the other three sets, but because it kept each of

those close, the combined games score was still in its favor.

Entering the final week of the World Team Tennis season, the

Breakers’ toughest test should come Tuesday and Wednesday, when they

play on the road, first at Hartford, followed by a matchup at

Delaware. Those two teams are atop the Eastern Conference and

Delaware improved to 9-0 Sunday and are now threatening the World

Team Tennis regular season record of 14 victories, set by the Newport

Beach Dukes in 1993.

The Breakers will close out the season with a pair of home matches

this coming weekend. On Friday, they play host to Kansas City. The

season finale is on Saturday against Martina Navratilova and the

Philadelphia Freedoms.

The winners of each conference will meet in the World Team Tennis

title match in New York during the U.S. Open.