Huntington's Jack Kennedy gives his all, but falls in first round of U.S. Open qualifying

Days before Huntington’s Jack Kennedy walked onto Court 12 of the U.S. Open for the first round of qualifying, the world No. 117 across the net, fans stacked against the fence and many thousands of dollars at stake, he said he’d be nervous and that was how he wanted it.

“Every match, you should have some nerves, some butterflies in your stomach,” Kennedy said in a phone interview last week. “It’s all part of it. If you don’t have butterflies, it means you don’t want it.”

On Tuesday, Kennedy, 17, wanted it badly but he lost a 6-4, 6-4 match against Thiago Agustin Tirante, a 24-year-old Argentine ranked as high as 90 in the world last year who was fresh off a Challenger final in Cancun, Mexico.

“I thought I really had a chance,” Kennedy said after the match at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. “This year kind of hurts.”

Kennedy attends high school online, the better to fit a schedule of international tournament travel and a practice routine that puts him on court two to four hours a day, six days a week. His parents, Bryan and Jeannie, are fans and players, though they never played at Jack’s level. Bryan manages a sales team at a lighting company; Jeannie is a counselor in Garden City schools.

Jack was introduced to the game when he was 2, and Jeannie’s mother gave him a miniature tennis racket. He won the first tournament he played, when he was 6. “He’s always been very fast and he’s always had a very high tennis IQ,” Bryan said. “When he plays someone the first time, it takes him a few games to figure out how to play them, but if something doesn’t work, he switches. He figures out a different way.”

Kennedy also played the Open qualifying tournament last year, losing in the first round. In both matches, he drew opponents with years of experience playing ATP Tour and Challenger events.. Kennedy, ranked as high as fifth in the world as a junior this year, said he hopes to someday make his living playing professionally but doesn’t have their experience.

Tirante, down 2-4 and two break points in the second set Tuesday, served his way to safety with an ace and a 130-mile per hour service winner. Another ace won him the game and Kennedy, once looking to extend his lead, was looking only to preserve it. He did not, digging a 0-40 hole in his next service game. The Argentine broke to equalize and did not look back.

What Kennedy took from this: “They know how to play with pressure really well, the guys that have been around on tour . . . He’s not afraid of a big moment.”

There was a difference, too, he said, between the physical demands of elite junior-level tennis, where he’s excelled, and the pro-level game. It wasn’t just facing 130-mph serves, he said. It was point after point of 10 or 12 ball rallies. “In the pros, you don’t see guys giving you free points. The engagement level is really high and they don’t drop.”

Over the course of a match — Tuesday’s was 1 hour, 40 minutes, during which Kennedy covered more than a mile of court, much of it in sprint bursts — “It’s very taxing on your body. He has a really heavy ball and he finds his forehand really well.”

Kennedy will play the junior event at the Open. Then he looks forward to another year of professional tournaments. “The past year or so of this, we knew this is what we want to really pursue,” he said.

Of Tuesday’s loss, he said “I walked with my head high.”