26-04-2025
Britain's Blu Baker cooks up a quarterfinal win in Mardy Fish tennis championships
VERO BEACH – On his strong serving right arm, Blu Baker has a tattoo that reads: Tennis is happiness, winning is everything.
On a breezy, hot Friday afternoon at the Vero Beach Tennis and Fitness Center, Baker realized both in a high-level 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over American teen Jack Kennedy to advance to the semifinals of the Mardy Fish Children's Foundation Tennis Championships.
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The $15,000 ITF-USTA Pro Circuit event donates most of the proceeds to local charities to provide underserved children with healthy afterschool care and summer activities in Indian River County.
Baker, 23, who lived his first 10 years in Portsmouth, U.K., before moving to Naples for 10 years and then Boca Raton (since 2022) partially attributed his ability to come from behind to his longtime domination in the Battle of Boca, a $10,000 UTR event held weekly at the South County Regional Park at Rick Macci's Tennis & Fitness Center.
Baker has won the popular weekly hard-court tournament run by Jason Zafiros a record 13 times. One more and Fish tournament director Randy Walker jokingly compared his feat to Rafael Nadal's amazing 14 title runs at the French Open, where Baker has played only in juniors.
'It builds confidence,'' said Baker in his British accent. 'For a lot of us it's hard to believe in ourselves but luckily for that tournament, Jason runs a very good event over there, a lot of these players have played there. It gives us a good opportunity to get matches in and a lot of confidence and some prize money, which is huge for us.
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'The matches paid off; they really did.'
Mardy Fish Tennis Championships: Andrew Fenty, young Americans find success in Vero Beach
Blu Baker, Great Britain
It was a tough day for America's brightest teens as wild-card, 17-year-old entrant Keaton Hance – who earned his first two ATP ranking points this week – was unable to deal with the power and consistency of 27-year-old qualifier Ryan Dickerson of Marlton, N.J., in a 6-1, 6-0 loss in a quarterfinal on the clay.
'I'm trying to find ways to get better on this journey and try to improve holistically all the time,'' said the 1298th-ranked Dickerson, who is into his first ITF semifinal after a six-year college career split between Duke and Baylor where he studied psychology and tennis coaching.
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'You don't lose; it's a you learn type mindset. You have chances every week. That's what's unique about the Futures. One week isn't super important because you have 35 of them.'
Dickerson will play the winner of the match between Andrew Fenty of College Park, Maryland (and Boca Raton) and seventh-seeded (only seed remaining) Will Grant of Boca Raton in one semifinal.
Kennedy, 16, and Hance, who have won several junior tennis tournaments around the world together and are committed to the University of Virginia and Texas respectively, are still alive in the doubles and will play Baker and Fenty in an evening semifinal match.
Kennedy, a Long Island native, is the 10th-ranked junior in the world while Hance is ranked 23rd. Both young men should be proud of how well they played against grown men.
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'It didn't go my way today. That happens in the sport we play,'' Kennedy said. 'It hurts a lot but I can't really be too mad at myself. I had a great run here and are still in the doubles. He stepped up his level in the second and really found his game. We got next week at Orange Park and am looking forward to that.'
At 5-foot-7, 140 pounds, Kennedy was painting the lines with his formidable groundstrokes and delicate drop shots to take the first set.
Kennedy, who possesses a Doogie Howser-like genius tennis IQ, was up a break at 3-1 before Baker began cutting down on his unforced errors. With Kennedy serving at 4-5, the 6-3 blonde Brit broke Kennedy at 15-40 to even the match at a set apiece.
Baker, who has the more potent forehand, went up 3-1 when Kennedy strained a glute muscle while changing directions. For the rest of the match, he was unable to plant on his forehands. A couple of dead-let cords that would've given Kennedy a break at 2-4 went against him to give Baker the comfortable 5-2 cushion.
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At 5-3 on his third match point Baker glided in to rip a sitter floater cross court for the victory. He has won one ITF $15K title (Boca, 2022) and five doubles titles.
'He's a complete and utter fighter,'' said Baker, who trains at One Tennis Academy in Boca Raton and has been coached by his father Steve, a longtime high school tennis coach in New Jersey and former player at the University of Santa Barbara.
'He's very quick and got to a lot of balls and I knew this was going to happen. I knew he would bring it from the start and I had to bring it to him and thankfully I did.'
Baker will play 23-year-old Tomas Luis, a former standout at Belmont University where he lives in Nashville, after the 956th-ranked Portugal native downed the 6-6 Preston Brown, an Omaha transplant living in Boca Raton, 6-2, 6-3. Luis' best pro result was a semifinal finish in a $25K in Portugal earlier this year.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Mardy Fish tennis championships: Blu Baker cooks up a quarterfinal win
