USC’s Nelson sweeps to title

It’s eight years later, and Lindsey Nelson is all grown up.

Nelson, who won the girls’ 14-and-under division championship at the Ojai Valley tennis tournament in 1999, showed Sunday that her game has matured nicely since then and has even improved markedly from last year.

The USC junior routed California junior Susie Babos, 6-2, 6-2, to claim the Pacific 10 Conference singles championship at Libbey Park in a rematch of the 2006 NCAA final won last May by Babos.

“I was more relaxed today, and I was able to control the points a little bit easier than last year,” she said. “I kind of have been playing like that all week. I’m just really comfortable here. I mean, I’ve played here since I was a little kid, so it seems like home.”

In the conference’s men’s singles final, Stanford sophomore Matt Bruch won for the second consecutive year with a 6-0, 6-4 victory over Washington senior Alex Slovic.

Nelson, who has split four meetings with the left-handed Babos over the last year, has now won the last two matches, including a Pac-10 dual match two weeks ago.

This time, she took control early, jumping to a 3-0 lead in the first set and going ahead, 5-0, in the second, thanks to a strong serve and deep, two-handed groundstrokes from both sides that kept her opponent pinned to the baseline.

The highest-ranked player in the tournament at No. 4 nationally, Babos had come from behind to post three-set victories over USC sophomore Amanda Fink in the second round and USC senior Anca Anastasiu in the quarterfinals. But she was helpless to stop the ninth-ranked Nelson.

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