Ghassemi finally meets his match

NEWPORT BEACH — Omeed Ghassemi played a lot of big hitters during his run to the boys’ 18 singles championship match at the War by the Shore tournament.

Usually, the patient Corona del Mar resident could just wait until his opponent would start missing.

But Henrique Norbiato didn’t do much of that on Friday morning, beating the No. 10-seeded Ghassemi, 7-5, 6-2, in the championship match at the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club.

Norbiato, an unseeded 15-year-old from Brazil who has been in America for less than two weeks, had the big serve and the powerful ground strokes. In the second set, he also started coming to the net after his serves, which didn’t really bother Ghassemi.

“Usually, when I play serve-and-volleyers, they miss my returns,” said Ghassemi, who will be a junior at Mater Dei. “They usually volley bad.”

That wasn’t the case with Norbiato, who was able to get a lot of cheap points that way.

“I think he might have missed about one volley the entire match,” Ghassemi said. “He was solid. He could easily be a serve-and-volleyer.”

The first set was tight, as the two players traded breaks of serve. Ghassemi was still on-serve as late as 5-6, but his serve was broken at love to lose the set.

It was even tighter in the second set, despite the 6-2 score. Seven of the eight games went to deuce, but five of those were won by the Brazilian.

Ghassemi’s last service game, at 2-5, went to five deuces before his forehand was long to end the match. In the end, Norbiato just had too many shots.

“Usually when it’s that close, some kids will tank or get tight,” Ghassemi said. “But he didn’t fold the entire match. I just tried to keep him on the court as long as I could.”

Norbiato, who is used to playing on the clay courts of South America, said it was his first-ever hard-court tournament. He is being trained to play in Futures tournaments starting next year, said his coach, Charles Orange.

Norbiato spoke limited English, although he knew enough to yell “Come on!” during the match. Afterward, he had compliments for his opponent.

“[Ghassemi] played very hard and didn’t stop fighting until the last point,” Norbiato said. “[Thursday], I couldn’t relax [in a two-set victory over CdM resident Parker Rhodes in the semis]. [Friday], it was double. I really couldn’t lose the focus because he was always there. I just fought and tried to do my best.”

Ghassemi was also courteous even after losing the tough-fought match. He was satisfied with making it to the boys’ 18s championship match, especially as the No. 10 seed.

“It just shows that anyone can do it,” he said. “You have to believe.

“To come from Brazil just to play tennis you’d better be solid. And he was; he was a good player. He had a lot of topspin and moved me around a lot.”

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or at [email protected].