Making All the Right Moves Toward Top : Racquetball: Toni Bevelock is more than willing to go some distance in pursuit of the top spot on the women’s tour.
SANTA ANA — Toni Bevelock has chased her dream thousands of miles and to three different states. Now, she is closing in.
Bevelock’s goal is to become the top women’s racquetball player on the professional tour. She has climbed to No. 3, but don’t remind her.
“I’m not happy being No. 3,” said Bevelock, who recently moved from Phoenix to Santa Ana to continue her chase. “When someone says, ‘This is Toni, she’s No. 3,’ I cringe. I want to be No. 1.”
Bevelock hopes to move closer this weekend at the Ektelon Winter Pro-Am Racquetball Championships at Santa Ana Racquetball World. The tournament, a benefit for Advanced Resources for Foster Kids, will feature 32 women professionals competing for a $12,000 purse. This is the third of eight stops on the 1989-90 professional racquetball tour. About 250 men and women amateurs also will compete.
The professionals begin play Friday and quarterfinals are scheduled for Saturday at 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Semifinals follow at 4 and 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The professional finals, following the amateur finals, will be played Sunday at 2 p.m. Admission is free.
Bevelock said her willingness to travel across the country for the sport has involved sacrifices, but also has improved her game.
She left her home in Dunmore, Pa., after high school in 1983 to attend and play racquetball at Memphis State. She had success--winning the National Intercollegiate Women’s Championship in 1987--but said a change was necessary to improve her game.
So she moved to Phoenix after graduation in January, 1988. There, Bevelock worked with a trainer and began to “really concentrate on my game.”
At first, she wondered if the sacrifice was worth it. “I can remember sitting in Phoenix some nights thinking, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” she said. “But I knew if I wanted to be No. 1 in the pros, I had to get in a different atmosphere.”
The move paid off as Bevelock had her most successful year in 1988, winning the American Amateur Racquetball Assn. national singles championship. Despite the success, the desire to face more competition and a full-time job at Racquetball World brought Bevelock to California about three months ago.
“I feel like I’ve really sacrificed a lot, but it’s definitely worth it,” Bevelock said. “I want to be the best in the world and to do that takes a lot of sacrifice.”
Bevelock, a right-handed player with one of the tour’s top backhands, is making progress toward the goal. She lost in the quarterfinals of the tour’s first stop this year in San Francisco in September but reached the finals for the first time at the most-recent stop in Alaska in November. Still, the tour’s top two players--Lynn Adams and Caryn McKinney--are standing in Bevelock’s way. Adams, of Costa Mesa, is the tour’s all-time leader in victories and earnings. McKinney, of Atlanta, was Player of the Year last year, taking an honor Adams had won four consecutive times.
Adams said Bevelock could emerge from a group of younger players as the tour’s top player.
“Toni is more of a total power player and she’s just starting to learn that the other aspects of the game can be a real nice blend to her power,” Adams said. “She’s starting to round out her game a little more.”
Both Adams and McKinney are 32. Bevelock, 24, said she considers herself the tour’s player of the future. But she is more concerned with the present.
“I don’t think either of the top two players have anything over me, physically,” she said. “It’s just mental. I don’t know how much longer they (Adams and McKinney) are going to play, but I’d rather beat them and be No. 1 while they’re still playing. I don’t want to just slide into it.”
