By Pete Borello

Los Altos resident wins division at Alpine Hills tennis tourney

The girls 16-and-under division final of the Alpine Hills Junior Classic featured patience vs. power.

Patience prevailed early on, with top seed Lani Ackerman winning the first set of last Friday’s tennis match in Portola Valley. In the end, however, the power of Los Altos resident Nisha Dixit proved overwhelming.

No. 2 seed Dixit, who seemed to get stronger as the match wore on, captured the next two sets to earn the championship trophy.

“She didn’t really have a whole lot,” Dixit said of Ackerman, whom she beat 3-6, 6-2, 6-0. “She’s a good player, but she doesn’t have power. So I wanted to use my power.”

The 5-foot Dixit said opponents sometimes underestimate her power game, which is just one of her many strengths.

“I’m short,” she said, “but I just try to be consistent, use my quickness and hit with power.”

This power worked against Dixit in the first set. She routinely misfired spirited ground strokes against Ackerman, who seemed content with hitting safe shots to keep the ball in play until Dixit made a mistake.

“I was a little nervous in the beginning because I didn’t know how she played,” Dixit said. “But once I got her down a little and started hitting my shots, I knew I could beat her.”

After dropping the initial game of the second set, Dixit rallied to take a 4-1 advantage with precise blasts that a tiring Ackerman failed to return or sometimes couldn’t even reach. Dixit broke serve three times in the set.

She then appeared to break Ackerman’s spirit early in the third set by claiming the first two games, both of which went to deuce.

And like the temperature - which reached 94 degrees by the close of the match - Dixit’s confidence soared. With each game her self-motivating screams of “Come on!” grew louder.

Dixit finally put an end to the 2 1/2-hour match by firing a shot her withered opponent from San Francisco could only return into the net.

“I played my game,” said Dixit, who attended Gunn High last year but will be home-schooled in the fall. “I was in the zone.”

This marked Dixit’s first tournament championship since she returned from hand surgery nine weeks ago.

Dixit wasn’t the only member of her family to take home a trophy from Alpine Hills on Friday. Her brother Naveen teamed with Andrew Kells (Tiburon) to win the boys 12 doubles title in straight sets. Dixit and Kells made up the top seed in their division.

In other action from the weeklong tournament:

Eric Chow, entering his junior year at St. Francis High, captured the boys 16 singles championship in convincing fashion Friday. The Sunnyvale resident, seeded No. 1, routed No. 5 Glenn de Jong (San Jose) 6-1, 6-2.

Gunn High’s Gabbi Hernandez (Palo Alto) claimed the girls 18 singles crown Friday with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Alexandra Lipton (Saratoga).

Mountain View resident Toki Sherbakov was on the losing end of a 6-2, 6-2 score in the boys 12 singles final Friday. Sherbakov was the seventh seed.