NEW YORK -- Sam Querrey had just walloped his way to one of the biggest wins of his tennis career but now, a bit later, he couldn't find his coach or his parents.
"I don't know where they are," the lanky 20-year-old said, grinning. "I want to call them, but, to be honest, I just dropped my cellphone in the toilet."
The wry grin didn't leave his face, even when he couldn't find an open chair in the players lounge.
"Looks like we're going to sit on the floor," he said, pointing to a patch of carpet.
And so it was that I found myself sitting on the floor of the bustling players lounge at the U.S. Open on Tuesday, talking to a kid who is a rare breed. Calm and collected, Querrey, who is from Thousand Oaks, is as unpretentious a tennis pro as exists at this gathering of sometimes insufferable stars. Despite hardly making a dent in the general sporting public's consciousness thus far, he is also America's most promising and accomplished male player under drinking age.
If you doubt his talent, you didn't see the game Querrey flashed during his opening match Tuesday afternoon against 22nd-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic. Last August, Berdych was a top-10 player. He has one win over Roger Federer and three over Rafael Nadal. Last time he played Querrey, five months back, Berdych lost just three games.
But Tuesday, in one of this tournament's most surprising early results, the lanky, 6-foot-6 Querrey did the steamrolling, winning, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2. It was a match that fully displayed the kind of loose, hard-hitting, potentially devastating game that should warm the hearts of those worried about the future of American tennis.
"One of those days where everything just goes right," said Querrey, who felt so good about his win that he called it one of the top three matches he's played. Querrey broke Berdych, possessor of a cannon serve, twice to start the match. He played the rest of the way with an easy flow, backing his big serve with an aggressive baseline game, pinning Berdych back with strokes that seemed to catapult from his racket, his arms free of any noticeable tension.
"I just like to be loose," Querrey said. "I've always been that way. . . . I just do what works for me."
It's refreshing, in this the age of the pampered and insecure, to find a young athlete who seems as comfortable in his own skin as this one. Maybe it's the way he grew up. American tennis is overly infatuated with sending young players away from their parents and off to assembly-line tennis factories.
