A. J. Brewer vs. Derrick Poon - 21 & Under Men's Singles

Were Shao Yu and Derrick hanging out together in Vegas. I only ask because I know the Poon family from a couple years ago and I have seen Shao Yu play when he came to the Bay Area, but I don't know how they would be friends or teacher and student.

The Derrick I see in this video has the same game he did two years ago at Masaaki's club. In fact, I would expect him to serve better than he appears. I doubt he has played that much in the last couple of years. Although he did play the Teams this year, so maybe he's been training lately.

His father and sister used to play at Masaaki's club as well. I wonder if they've moved from the Bay Area or if Shao Yu has come to San Francisco.

On the off chance you thought the guy with his back to us was Shao Yu, it's really Wallace Liu, another of Masaaki's long time students.

When I was watching the video, I noticed a couple of guys from Washington state warming up on the table behind. In the middle of this video, Fan comes over and hits with one of them. That's Fan in the background of this stillshot you posted.

This was a fun one for me to watch. I'm not sure AJ really realized that Derrick was a lefty. The kid from Indianna hit a few nice backhands early on right into Derrick's forehand power zone and Derrick properly smoked them. He really does have a nice forehand loop. He gets a lot of pop on the ball which I think comes through in the video.

I thought AJ had better serves and a better backhand but he was definitely underpowered on the forehand side compared to his opponent. I know that will change as he gets older but because he continued to feed Derrick's forehand, he was blasted out of a number of rallies.

Thanks a lot for posting these videos. I hope it's not too time consuming for you because it really adds a lot to the forum.

jrnymn