Pinewood tennis player Adam Elliget recently returned recently from Belton, S.C. with two more state championships for his resume.
Elliget won both the singles and doubles titles in the boys 12-year-old division during the Palmetto Championships held June 5-12.
The Pinewood rising seventh-grader entered the tournament as the division’s No. 1 ranked player and won four straight matches to advance to the championship. There, Elliget defeated No. 2 seeded Hampton Drake of Columbia 6-2, 6-1.
“The first couple of matches, I didn’t play my best but I got by,” Elliget said. “After that, I was executing well, so I just kept attacking.”
The 5-foot, 7-inch, 105-pound 11-year-old prefers an aggressive style, from his serve to his net play.
That style worked well for him in Belton as he teamed up with Drake after singles play and the two claim the doubles title for the 12s.
Elliget began playing tennis at a young age and has experienced his share of success at the sport.
His father, Jimmy Elliget, played in college and is the assistant tennis coach at Pinewood, but he says he never pressured Adam to follow in his footsteps.
“I didn’t necessarily want my kids to play tennis,” the father said. “But when he was 4, he just grabbed one of my racquets and started hitting the ball against the garage door. By the time he was 5, he was out on the court. It came natural to him and then it started to steamroll from there.”
At the age of eight, Adam played in his first state finals match. The next year, he won a regional title at the Southern Championships.
He now has five state titles in the past two years and three regional titles, one of which was for singles. He has also done well in national tournaments, with several appearances in the semi-finals and a doubles win in a national tournament in Augusta.
In his two years with the Pinewood tennis team, he earned all-state and all-region honors as a fifth-grader and sixth-grader playing at the varsity level.
He was undefeated his first year with the team and only lost two matches, one in singles and the other in doubles, last spring. He was also named to the High School Sports Report All-state Team.
Adam also participates in football, basketball, soccer and baseball, though not at the varsity level.
His next big event is the Southern Championships in Cary, N.C. this week. There, he will face qualifiers from nine other states. He says he “feels pretty good about the doubles tournament” but knows there competition in singles play will be stiff.
He is currently ranked 38th in the country and 5th in the South for his division.
However, he doesn’t travel as much as many of the top players and that hurts his ranking. His father says he does have several wins over players ranked in the Top 10.
 
Contact Roger Lee @ 873-9424 ext. 213 or rlee@journalscene.com.