Forest Hills teen takes steps toward Open

Coming off a 6-0, 6-1 trouncing over Taylor Crable of Forest Hills for the club title at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Richard “R.J.” Del Nunzio feels very confident that he will do extremely well starting Labor Day weekend in the qualifying tournament of the U.S. Open Junior Boys Category at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
One of the future pro player’s biggest highlights was competing in the Grade One ITF Eddie Herr Tournament in Florida, when he defeated Bruno Santana and then lost to Nate Belic, both high ranking juniors. Another highlight came when he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and turned back Austin Siegel, also of the U.S., for the ITF championship.
“It was exciting playing there (in Jamaica),” Del Nunzio said one day after practice at the National Tennis Center. “I played a kid who was from there and had a lot of energy….”
Del Nunzio is very excited about playing in the upcoming qualifying round of the U.S. Open Junior Boys Tournament. He expects to have most of his friends in attendance and plans to feel very relaxed and confident in the “big one.” His goal is to get to the main draw of the U.S. Open Junior Tournament.
The tennis star credits a great deal of his success to coach Bob Ingersole at the West Side Tennis Club, who helped him with all aspects of the sport.
“My backhand is good; he didn’t touch that,” the youngster recently said. “He made my forehand and serve major weapons. That will help me get into the Futures. My goal for the end of next year is to be among the top 500 to 600 players in the rankings.”
“Playing in the international circuit you experience a lot of different things,” he said. “Clay (playing on clay courts) is a huge thing. I didn’t like red clay. And I just played my first hard court tournament in a whole year. I had played six months on red clay, which is very different for me. “It changed my game and helped me a lot with a hard court game, my favorite surface.”
“My serve improved recently over the past three months,” he said, whose best strokes are his serve and forehand.
For a while during his younger days, he was a two-sport athlete as he also played basketball. He was even on the hoops team at Kew Forest High School. However, he gave it up to concentrate on one sport. He is supposed to enter his senior year of high school at Kew Forest, but this may change as September approaches.
The youngster has a lot of offers for schools all over the country, but right now he is leaning more toward a professional tennis career.
“Attending college is a back-up plan,” he said. “I’ve been doing on line schooling. That’s been a big difference to me toward a tennis career.”
Del Nunzio expects in three or four years to be playing in the main draw of the U.S. Open. Right now he feels very confident in his game even though it is one of late developing. Since he is a late developer, he doesn’t think that he will grow a lot more.
“I don’t think I’ll see the best in myself until I’m 22 or 23 years old,” he said. “Then I hope to see some very good results.”
His favorite pro player is Matt Safran because of the way he dominates from the baseline – and as for this year’s Open, he predicts that Novak Djokovic will win the men’s singles title.
“Djokovic has been playing very well,” Del Nunzio went on. “I didn’t think that he would win the Wimbledon title.”
But as Del Nunzio himself has proved, anything is possible.