Spotlight on Dan Freeman

HANOVER - If Hollywood ever decides to make The Pete Sampras Story, the filmmakers won't have to look far for a stand-in. All they have to do is take a 45-minute drive over the Sepulveda Pass and cruise the San Fernando Valley until they get to Chatsworth, a city of 41,000 people that includes someone who fits the bill very nicely, thank you.

Long and lanky like Sampras, with close-cropped dark brown hair, Dartmouth senior Dan Freeman certainly has a passing physical resemblance to a younger version of the winner of 14 Grand Slam titles.

Better yet, the economics major's game has more than a passing resemblance to that of Sampras and not by happenstance. Sampras was, and remains, a tennis role model for the All-Ivy League hopeful.

"My strengths as an athlete and as a tennis player happen to almost exactly correlate with his strengths and style as a tennis player," Freeman said. "I used to watch my swings on video and I actually looked a lot like he did.

"And," he continued, "when you are growing up as a tennis player and you notice that you say, 'OK, this is how they play, so 'that' style of game should have 'this' type of strategy, where you go for 'these' type shots. So I started going for a lot of Pete Sampras-type shots and served and volleyed and came up with a game very similar to his."

That game has served him well.

A top-20 singles player in the ultra-competitive Southern California junior ranks, Freeman broke into college tennis with a splash, knocking off Harvard's No. 1 player as a freshman in what he called, "the biggest win of my life," to that point. He played most of that year at No. 2 singles and No. 1 doubles, finishing with a 19-13 overall singles record (13-11 in dual match play) and an 18-14 mark in doubles (11-7 at No. 1).

After combining for 14 wins in singles and doubles at No. 2 as a sophomore, he moved up to the No. 1 singles role as a junior. He enjoyed a three-set win over the No. 1 player for 29th-ranked UC San Diego last year, but labored at times a year ago.

"There's a huge difference actually between number one and number two," he admitted. "I think I've been doing a much better job this year in the number one spot."

That was evident in October when he scored a 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 win over Columbia's Jonathan Wong, the top seed in the Wilson/ITA Regionals and the No. 1 player in the region.

"That was the new biggest win of my life," Freeman said with a grin. "It's the right time to be hitting my peak, I suppose."

The path to that peak began when he visited his older brother at Dartmouth as a high school sophomore. Although the rigors of Brentwood School limited the opportunities he had to play outside of California, it was at a clay-court tournament in Washington, D.C., that Freeman really caught the eye of Coach Chuck Kinyon.

"Conveniently it was the best match that I ever played in my life," Freeman said with a laugh. "I had never played on a clay court before because it doesn't exist in California. The clay would just blow away.

"So I showed up serving and volleying on a clay court - which is unheard of - and playing unbelievably well. I'm sure Chuck was thinking, 'A kid who is serving and volleying on clay is going to be deadly indoors.' So he recruited me."

Freeman actually flirted with accepting a tennis scholarship to UC Santa Barbara before deciding to apply early to Dartmouth. Ironically, the fact that he had an older brother at Dartmouth almost cost Kinyon his eventual No. 1.

"I didn't necessarily want to go to the same school that my brother went to, so in a way it was a big turnoff," Freeman said. "But Chuck convinced me to come up on a visit and check out the school. Lo and behold it was unbelievable. l went to a couple of classes and they were very fascinating.

"I enjoyed that the students walking around were very down to earth nice people. I felt very comfortable on the campus and thought maybe this is where I should go, which is exactly what l did not picture."

In addition to the feel on campus and the coaching of Kinyon, the Boss Tennis Center was a powerful draw with the righthander with the powerful serve.

"It is unbelievable when you walk inside because it looks brand-new," Freeman said. "The courts are perfect. It is probably the nicest indoor tennis facility I have ever seen."

Which you would have to know would be important for a SoCal kid who called home excitedly in the late fall of his freshman year to tell his parents about a snowball fight on the green, a result of the first snowfall he'd ever really experienced.

He's thoroughly enjoyed his four years in New England but looks forward to returning to the Golden State where he grew up not only dreaming of playing like Pete Sampras, but once had a chance to play against him.

"It was the summer before my senior year of high school," Freeman said. "It was through some charity auction that my best friend's dad set up. It was the experience of a lifetime. I got to play a tiebreaker with him."

Not only that, but he won, 7-5. After which Pistol Pete was on target with his remarks to the young man whose game he just might have recognized.

"He didn't really give me any tips," Freeman recalled, "but he said, 'You are a very good player: Have a lot of success playing in college.' "

Check and double check.