Maybe there is something in the water in Florida.
One month after Lauren Strasburger, a Colorado State University junior from Fort Lauderdale, captured the Denver City Open title, a Floridian shined again Sunday at the Gates Tennis Center.
Lorinda Boothman, a University of Denver junior from Naples, Fla., defeated Allie Shafner 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) in the women’s championship match at the Colorado State Open.
“I am a little surprised, because I just haven’t played a lot of matches since our season ended,” Boothman said. “I was just trying to get some practice matches in, and I really wasn’t expecting to win.”
It wasn’t like Boothman and Shafner, a former state champion at Cherry Creek High School and now a Michigan senior, were strangers. At the University of Michigan Invitational in January, Shafner won a three-set meeting.
Boothman simply put the ball in play Sunday and forced Shafner to make the errors. A quick 30-minute first set saw an aggressive Shafner make 15 unforced errors against only nine winners.
“She changed the height of the ball pretty well, so it was out of my strike zone,” said Shafner, who won her high school Class 5A title in 2004.
And much as she did in Ann Arbor, Mich., in January, Boothman jumped out to a quick second-set lead 4-1, only to watch Shafner battle back to force a tiebreaker.
“I was just trying to keep the ball in play and make her miss. I’m not a power hitter, and I wasn’t about to try to stay with her like that,” Boothman said. “I wasn’t expecting to breeze through like that.”
In the men’s championship match, Willie Dann gave Cory Ross all he could handle for an hour, then simply ran out of gas.
Ross, a champion at the Elam Classic in Grand Junction and the Denver City Open last month, remained unbeaten on the Colorado summer circuit with a 7-6 (7-2), 6-0 victory over his friend.
“The first thing he said after we shook hands was he was tired, and I wasn’t, and it was as simple as that,” said Ross, who will look to finish his unblemished summer next month in Boulder. “I was at an advantage there, when he felt like he couldn’t beat me because he can’t last long enough, and I really just couldn’t feel better out there.”
Dann, who has yet to take a set from Ross, had the 25-year-old teaching pro on the ropes in the first set for a moment. After earning the first break of the match to go up 5-3, Dann had a chance to serve out the set but watched Ross break right back in grand fashion with one of his six first-set winners, a backhand pass down the line.
“That was the turning point in the match. For him to be that close and not to get it was obviously a huge letdown for him,” Ross said. “I realized it right when it happened and I told myself to capitalize on it and turn things back in my direction.”
It took Ross just 20 minutes to close out the match, in one stretch winning 12 of 14 points, including 10 in a row.
Staff writer Jon E. Yunt can be reached at 303-954-1354 or jyunt@denverpost.com.
