Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Clay court winner
Axel Nefve, of Boca Raton, wins the boys’ 18s championship.
Axel Nefve shouted. He jumped. He fist-pumped. But then he stopped. He walked forward, rested his hands on the net at midcourt and breathed a sigh of relief.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to be here,” Nefve said.
One week ago, Nefve, who lives in Boca Raton, entered the Boys’ 18s bracket of Delray Beach’s National Clay Court Championships as a No. 17 seed. On Sunday, in front of his father and mother at the Delray Beach Tennis Center, he was named champion.
Nefve defeated Ryan Goetz 6-2, 6-4 in the finals. Afterwards, as photographers swarmed him, Nefve was handed a golden tennis ball framed in a black box.
“This one was just about leaving everything I had on the court,” Nefve said.
It was also the culmination of a weeklong tournament in which Nefve dominated much of his competition. Through seven matches, Nefve lost just one set, a 6-4 first-set decision in the semifinals against No. 13-seed Mason Beiler.
“Lot of positive, a lot of negative emotions throughout this whole week,” said Nefve, who trains with Plantation-based tennis coach Nick Saviano. “It’s tough to remain mentally positive, but I feel like I did a good job staying in it.”
The tournament, which included many of the top junior players from around the country, had a different feel on the last day. A large crowd watched courtside as the players warmed up. Officials attached a camera to a drone and flew it overhead, snapping pictures of the court. For the first time this week, ball boys in black T-shirts were stationed around the netting, holding towels and retrieving balls for the two players.
Nefve started strong, jumping out to a 3-1 lead enroute to a first-set win. As Nefve began to pull away in the second, Goetz grew increasingly frustrated, sometimes slamming his racket into the clay court after he lost a point.
On the final point of the match, Goetz returned a ball to Nefve that soared past the baseline and landed out of bounds.
Nefve let out a yell and celebrated.
“I knew winning this would be great, but I was trying to take it one match at a time,” Nefve said. “Maybe in the last game or so was I actually thinking about the title, and that kinda pumped me to keep playing better.”
After winning the tournament, Nefve won’t get much time off. He’ll travel to Kalamazoo, Mich., for another junior tournament next week.
But Monica Nefve, Axel’s mother, sees a different tournament in her son’s future, one that she said is his ultimate goal: making it to a Grand Slam. She thinks he can get there.
“Absolutely,” she said, smiling. “I have no doubt.”