By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Taylor Dent lost a hundred bucks but won another match at the Mercedes-Benz Cup Thursday afternoon at the LATC.
In that 6-7(4), 6-2, 7-5 victory over Max Mirnyi, Dent showed just how much he has learned so far, and just how much he still has to learn about the game of tennis.
He owes coach Eliot Teltscher the hundred because he didn’t swing at a serve he thought went out despite the linesman making no call against it.
“I have a very bad habit. If the ball is out, I tend to just let it go, like on that serve,” Dent said. “It’s cost me a couple times when there’sbeen a no-call. A few weeks ago (Teltscher) said, ‘Every time you do that it’s a hundred dollars.’”
But despite that error, Dent managed to beat Mirnyi of Belarus. He didn’t do it just on the strength of his powerful serves, either. His return game, volleying skills, slicing backhands and lack of unforced errors played just as crucial a role in propelling Dent to the quarterfinals.
Dent, a wild card who upset No. 6 seed Carlos Moya to get to the second round, let Mirnyi know he wouldn’t roll over by keeping the game close in the first set, though he lost the tiebreak 7-4. Dent reinforced this point in the second set, easily taking it 6-2.
But he had problems in the third. Officials made key calls that Dentdidn’t agree with. So the question was, could he be composed about what he thought were bad calls, or would he let it get to him?
With the match tied 5-5 and with Dent on the verge of breaking Mirnyiat 40-0, Mirnyi had a serve that Dent thought was out. The linesman made a call that went against Dent, however, and next thing you knew, Mirnyiserved two tough ones and the game was at deuce.
But Dent showed his growing maturity when he played through three deuces to win the game. On the last one Mirnyi double-faulted.
But the officials still weren’t done with Dent.
In the final game he was up 40-15 when he slammed a serve everyone thought was an ace. Dent ran up to the net as Mirnyi headed there to shake hands. Several members of the audience got up to leave.
The chair umpire said, “Let.”
That’s when an inexperienced, young player lets the pressure and the frustration get to him. Dent didn’t. He looked furious about the call, but went back to the baseline, had another tough serve, volleyed briefly,and sent a stroke down the left baseline to take the set and match.
Dent likes to compare his game now to what it was six months ago. At the press conference, he said that six months ago he definitely would’ve lost the match.
“Probably after that first set I would’ve snapped,” he said. “Losing that breaker, playing a bad breaker ... I probably would’ve busted a few rackets, and that would’ve been all she wrote.”
A reporter asked Dent what his personal record in broken rackets was.
“Wow,” he said, contemplating. “I would not even guess. I have broken my fair share.
“But that’s all over,” he added quickly. “No more.”
Dent will next play Xavier Malisse in the quarterfinals.