VERO BEACH — The exhibition match between four local tennis pros turned into a breath-taking tiebreaker at John’s Island as the Romanian slammed the ball at the Latvian and the Latvian rocketed it back.
Next, the American served with a powerful shot to the corner, which the Lithuanian surprisingly returned.
Meanwhile, across town, on this same Saturday, a Moroccan tennis pro lectured on defending against a lob at a doubles strategy clinic, while a Namibian tennis pro took a workshop on teaching kids under 10, and a Swedish pro drove north on Interstate 95 with local pros from Peru and Aruba.
Welcome to Vero Beach – a United Nations of talent when it comes to tennis – where a 22-mile stretch is home to top athletes from about two dozen countries.
Besides Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Peru, Aruba and the U.S., tennis coaches here come from Colombia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Belgium, England, France, Ecuador, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
“What’s unusual about Vero Beach is that so many countries are represented in tennis in an area with a population under 25,000,” said Gil Keegan, a John’s Island doubles player who has taken lessons from almost all of them.
U.S.-born tennis pro Mike Raheley agrees.
“Vero is unique because it’s so tennis-crazy, it attracts the cream of the crop in tennis pros from around the world like no other small town.”
The path from a country a 10- to 20- hour plane ride away to the clay courts of Vero Beach is the same for most of the international tennis pros who land here.
The story of Alet Filmater, 28, from Windhoek, Namibia is typical: A coach from the International Tennis Federation noticed her at a match in South Africa and notified a coach he knew at a small college in the U.S.
The next thing Filmater knew, she left the land of Bushmen and Zulu and arrived in the land of “Y’all” and fried chicken in Cookville, Tenn., at Tennessee Tech.
“Talk about culture shock,” she said.
But she was thankful for the opportunity and graduated in 2006 with a major in finance, then toured with the World Tennis Association, moving to Dallas as a club pro.
In 2007, she moved to Vero Beach to be near tennis-playing friends, and worked at Grand Harbor, The Boulevard and The Moorings.
While she ranked in the top 500 of women tennis players in the world, Filmater said she knew she needed to break 100 to make a good living as a player.
“For me, the solution was teaching tennis,” she said.
Like Filmater, Magnus Gustafsson from Sweden also got a scholarship to a small U.S. college – Ferris State University near Grand Rapids, Mich.
“The big universities get the great, young American players and the smaller schools go out of the country to recruit the best players,” said Gustaffson, 45.
After graduating, he returned to Sweden and then got a job in Vero Beach as a pro.
“It was February and there was green everywhere and oranges growing on trees. It was so crazy-beautiful, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Gustaffson now works at the Moorings with Kriegler Brink from South Africa who was ranked as the No. 1 junior in South Africa before going to Texas Christian University on a tennis scholarship.
What attracted Brink to Vero Beach was the abundance of clay courts, as well as a number of important tournaments for juniors in South Florida.
“You get an unusual combination here that helps kids develop,” he said.
At Twin Oaks Tennis Center, owner Alain Mignolet from Liege, Belgium, strings a racquet while talking about the growing number of foreigners on college tennis teams.
Mignolet played on the University of South Florida tennis team in the mid- 1970s.
Back then, before the Internet, he said, it was harder for a young player outside the U.S. to hook up with a college coach here.
Now, it’s easier and more prevalent than ever. Communication is much simpler. They e-mail back and forth. They look at videos on YouTube. Agreements are made quickly.
But, for Mignolet, who works to develop young tennis players from Vero Beach, he wishes it were different.
“Our local kids work so hard and their parents spend a lot of money. Shouldn’t they get the slots at the small colleges after the big university slots are filled?” he asked.
Then, he answers his own question: “It’s true there is tremendous junior tennis talent outside the U.S.”
Besides, he said, kids from other countries are often preferred by college tennis coaches because, not only are they talented, they’re less likely to buck authority.
“A coach can tell foreign players to lift weights and run for an hour before three hours on the court and they’ll do it. But an American player will often question it,” said Mignolet.
Also, said Mignolet, it’s easier for a young player to develop in Europe than in the US.
“Everything is closer so it doesn’t cost as much to go to tournaments and the tennis federations put government money into the young players,” he said.
Still, he believes if any place in the U.S. can give European countries a run for their money when it comes to developing young tennis players, it’s Vero Beach.
“The number of beautiful tennis clubs and the high quality of the tennis pros here make it like no place else it in the country,” he said.
Despite the wealth at these clubs, said long-time pro Mike Rahaley, tennis doesn’t require a lot of money to play.
“Anyone who wants to play or teach tennis is lucky to find Vero,” he said.
An exhibition match at John’s Island ended with a great serve by the Latvian, which Lithuanian Aurelija Miseviciute – known for her ability to return a good serve – missed, making the final score 7-6, in favor of the American and Latvian.
Misceviute, 25, who was ranked in the top 20 in the world as a junior player and who was an All-American from the University of Arkansas tennis team, came to Vero Beach after graduating.
“One of the best mixed doubles exhibitions we’ve ever assembled here,” chair umpire Tim Bruggeman said. “The level of tennis in Vero Beach just keeps getting higher and higher.”