James Nearing knew he was on to a good thing when he took care of the No. 2 seed in straight sets his first match at the Interior Open tennis championship in Kelowna.
The 25-year-old from Prince George came into the 17-player men's singles event as a relative unknown but he's certainly on the radar now among the top players in the province after advancing all the way to the final.
Nearing lost the championship match Sunday 6-2, 6-2 to Ash Misquith of Vancouver, the 181st ranked men's singles player in Canada. Misquith, 31, the 2014 Stanley Park Open champion, has a 2-2 record this year in International Tennis Federation events and he figured out how to return the six-foot-five Nearing's booming serves and built healthy leads in each of the two sets in the final.
"I lost 6-2, 6-2 but I felt it was closer than that," said Nearing. "A lot of the games went to deuce and if I could have done a better job of holding serve I could have made it closer. I didn't feel I was overpowered. He was a lot faster and more consistent with his power shots and he came to the net at key times. He also had a pretty hard serving game.
"I was happy getting to the final. There were some pretty good players there from Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. It was a good tournament and I was surprised I made it that far and I know I surprised a lot of people down there."
Nearing opened Saturday with a straight-set (6-0, 6-1) victory over Mark Harrison of Salmon Arm, the second seed. Nearing than defeated Brendan Manansala of Burnaby. Nearing broke serve in the first set to go up 4-3, then won the next eight games in a 6-3, 6-0 triumph to advance to the semifinal round Sunday against Daniel Dziamarga of Vancouver.
"Daniel is around my height and he also had a hard serve, about the same pace as mine, and it was kind of a serving battle between the two of us," said Nearing. "The difference was a break (in serve) each set. I broke him at 3-3 in the first set and it was the same in the second set. We were both hitting the ball with power and it was kind of first-strike tennis."
Nearing was successful with about 60 per cent of his first serves and his second serve was even more effective, putting his opponents in vulnerable positions.
"A lot of the guys there had trouble with my second serve, I just tried to kick it up high to their backhand sides, just getting it out of their strike zones," he said.
Nearing is in his second summer in Prince George, having moved to the city from Colbourg, Ont., to take on a position as a chemical engineer at the Husky Oil refinery. In his only other tournament action this year, Nearing beat fellow Prince George Tennis Club member Kristian Kiland in the final of the Prince George Citizen Open in June.
Nearing said he had to step up his game significantly at the Interior Open.
"It was a pretty high level of tennis, I had to go 100 per cent all the way through to win games," he said. "It just got more competitive the further the draw went along."
Kiland and two other PGTC members will be in Kamloops this weekend for the Sunshine Open. Kiland will compete in men's singles and will form a doubles team along with his brother Jim Condon. Nancy Condon will play mixed doubles with her son Jim and will form a women's doubles team with Fran Mann of Kelowna. Condon, 59, and Mann, 69, have been partners in tennis and badminton partner dating back to 1990 when they lived in Terrace.
Nearing won the 2014 Sunshine Open singles championship but due to work commitments won't be making the trip to try to defend his title. He plans to compete in the 104th annual Vernon tournament on Labour Day weekend.
