Andrew Park

Taylor Dent, a 17-year-old from Newport Beach, was one of four players given wild-card berths into the main draw of the $50,000 ATP Challenger Feb. 20-28 at Nellie Gail Ranch Tennis & Swim Club in Laguna Hills. Dent, who turned professional before last year's U.S. Open, has an ATP ranking of 413. In 1996, Dent won the Southern Section individual singles title as a freshman at Corona del Mar. USC freshman Andrew Park, from San Marino, was also given a wild-card berth.

The Easter Bowl junior tennis tournament returns to Palm Springs at the Riviera Resort and Racquet Club after a year's hiatus in Miami. Woodbridge High senior Chase Exon is the highest-seeded county player in the event, which begins this morning and includes 455 of the nation's top junior players from around the country. Exon, who has signed with Pepperdine, is seeded eighth in the boys' 18 singles division.

Marissa Irvin of Harvard-Westlake High defeated Lauren Kalvaria of Indiatlantic, Fla., 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, to win the girls' 18 championship at the Easter Bowl junior tennis tournament Friday at Riviera Resort and Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Top-seeded Irvin, who has signed with Stanford, defeated second-seeded Kalvaria in a two hour, 10 minute match. "I would have been satisfied with this tournament if I had lost or won," Irvin said. "She played very well.

A Wilmington car repair shop owner pleaded no contest Thursday to charges he falsified a smog certificate for an undercover state agent conducting a "sting" operation at local smog check facilities. Andrew Park, 34, was sentenced to either 60 days in County Jail or 60 days service on a Caltrans work crew and ordered to pay $9,265, according to Deputy City Atty. Don Kass.

Geoff Abrams of Newport Beach advanced to the boys' 18 division finals at the 93rd Southern California Junior Sectional Invitational Tennis Championships Saturday by defeating second-seeded Noah Newman of Los Angeles, 7-5, 6-3, at Los Caballeros Sports Village in Fountain Valley. Abrams, who was unseeded, will face David White of Rancho Santa Fe at noon in the final. White advanced with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over fifth-seeded Joseph Gilbert from Fullerton.

The Southern California Junior Sectional Championships begin today at seven Orange County sites. The junior sectionals, with more than 1,700 participants, is the largest junior tennis tournament in the nation. Qualifying rounds in five boys' and girls' age divisions begin today and run through Tuesday. The 32-player main draws begin Wednesday and end June 30 with the finals at Los Caballeros Sports Village in Fountain Valley.

Kres Mersky's Groucho Marx-ist comedy, "Algerian Romance," at Theatre West, is likely to leave you grouchier than a root canal. This thankfully short but despairingly unfunny tale builds unsteady parallels between patriotism and romantic relations, using a just-ousted dictator of a banana republic, Juan (George Tovar), who hides in the hotel room of a recently jilted American dentist, Bob (Andrew Park). You might be thinking, "Are there bananas in Algeria?"

Apparently there is some magic left in the old man's racket. After searching for his game, his confidence and the right racket for more than a set, Corona del Mar freshman Taylor Dent found all three when his father, former top 10 professional Phil Dent, handed him one of his own.

San Marino senior Andrew Park didn't see the familiar face he was expecting in the Southern Section individual boys' tennis finals, but it didn't seem to bother him much. The top-seeded Park defeated Laguna Beach's Aaron Talarico, 6-1, 6-2, Saturday at the SeaCliff Tennis Club in Huntington Beach to win a section title on his third trip to the final. Park, the nation's No. 1 player in boys' 18s, didn't play last year because he was in Europe for a junior tournament.