Huntington's Jack Kennedy reaches third round of U.S. Open boys tournament

Jack Kennedy’s summer isn’t over.

In his second match of the U.S. Open Junior Boys' singles draw, the Huntington native defeated big-serving Swiss Flynn Thomas, extending a seasonal campaign that took him deep into the draws of junior events of the French Open and Wimbledon and at the USTA Boys’ 18 National Championships at Kalamazoo in early August.

On Tuesday before a hometown crowd in bright and airy Louis Armstrong Stadium, Kennedy built a methodical 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 win. He was happy to be playing, he told reporters later, even if his opponent, who screamed and punched his racquet after lost points and called for the trainer multiple times, was not.

“I’m happy to be here in this beautiful place,” said Kennedy, 17. “Not many people get to play in these great stadiums.” As for his opponent’s agonizing: “A couple of years ago it would have rattled me,” said Kennedy. “It’s what happens when people try to get in your head.”

His answer to distraction is to “focus on myself . . . You move on, the match goes on.”

Kennedy broke at 2-2 in the first set, then consolidated at 3-2, 40-15 with a 113-mile per hour serve down the T. It drew a slow, high bouncing return which he dispatched, mercilessly, with a forehand into Thomas’ backhand corner.

In those games and for much of the rest of the match, Kennedy was buoyed by Thomas’ unforced errors — the Swiss recorded 37 — and propelled by his own tactics. Again and again, he tipped neutral cross-court backhand rallies his way by slipping around to find his forehand, shaping a high-bouncing inside-out into his opponent’s backhand or hitting the inside-in low, hard and flat to end the point.

“That’s my game, simplified: Heavy to the backhand, lift the ball,” Kennedy said. “He was having trouble on the backhand side, giving a lot of balls short . . .  thought there was a weakness there.”

In the second set, Thomas put just 34% of his first serves in play, but Kennedy was little better, digging himself a 0-40 hole at 1-2 before conceding the break on an 18-ball rally.

Thomas ran away with that set, but his momentum did not carry over. His first serve, which topped out at 118 miles per hour in the first set, started to miss by feet, not inches. Serving to go on the board at 0-1 in the third set, he got pulled into a morass of deuces, double-faulting away one game point and later the break.

Kennedy had set up the break simply by running down balls and staying in points, allowing himself a first pump and a muffled “yeah;” when Thomas conceded it, he hit himself in the head until his hat fell off and then he hit himself some more.

Kennedy sprinted to a 5-1 lead in the third before Thomas recovered. Minutes later he was in the media garden. He planned to “recover, stretch, eat,” he said, “just kind of relax” before his third round match against Brazil’s Luis Guto Miguel.