A Tennis Brat He’s Not : But Hansen-Dent Takes Advantage of Advantages

IRVINE —  The freshman with the blond flyaway hair has had the advantages.

Access to endless court time, buckets of balls, private lessons. A family heritage of Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French and the Italian.

But if there is a tennis brat on the court when Brett Hansen-Dent is playing, it’s the guy on the other side of the net.

Hansen-Dent is the modest one, a UC Irvine freshman who was ranked No. 32 in the country before the season had begun. He swears he struggles with his confidence, even though he lost only once in 42 matches as a Newport Harbor High School senior, and was ranked No. 1 among Southern California junior players, and 19th in the country.

“He lacks an ego,” UC Irvine Coach Greg Patton said. “He’s very humble and one of the most popular players of the Southern California juniors.”

Patton says Hansen-Dent doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, although sometimes Patton wishes he did.

“Sometimes he takes it too far,” Patton said. “He plays out (of bounds) balls. It happens every match.”

Hansen-Dent won the Southern Section title at Newport Harbor last season, but that is one of the least of his accomplishments. He won the boys’ title in the Ojai tournament last spring. After making it to the semifinals of the prestigious Rolex Southern California intercollegiate tournament this fall, he began this season playing No. 1 singles for Irvine, the first true freshman to do so in Patton’s 12 seasons as coach.

“I really fully believe he’s going to be a world-class player in the pros,” Patton said.

Playing No. 1 put Hansen-Dent on the other side of the net from the nation’s top college players.

“That’s the big difference from juniors,” said Hansen-Dent, 18. “Now I’m playing guys who are 22, 23 years old. They’re a lot stronger than me. You’ve got to make up for it some other way. I’ll get stronger eventually.”

He was 5-5 at No. 1, and has gone 6-3 at No. 2, where he is playing now. Including tournaments, his record is 21-11.

Slowed by a back injury that kept him off the court for a month around Christmas, Hansen-Dent fell to No. 2 in March, overtaken by Mike Roberts, a junior playing some of the best tennis of his career.

“I don’t mind playing No. 2,” said Hansen-Dent, who was tied for 58th in recent rankings. “If he starts losing, then sure, I’ll play No. 1. Right now, he’s playing really well.”

Patton, once concerned how the change might affect Hansen-Dent, no longer worries.

“If you asked Brett to lead a parade, he’d want to go off and be in the middle with the guy on the tuba and the one with the big snare drum.”

Hansen-Dent grew up in a tennis family, but his interest didn’t become intense, he says, until he was 13 or 14.

“I wasn’t real good until I was 16,” he said.

His mother is Bettyann Dent, who played tennis mostly under the name Bettyann Stuart, and once reached the doubles final of the U.S. Open.

His stepfather is Phil Dent, who coaches Michael Chang and is director of tennis at the John Wayne Tennis Club in Newport Beach.

As a player, Phil Dent, an Australian, won the doubles title and reached the singles final at the Australian Open. He also reached the doubles final at Wimbledon and the singles semifinals of the French and Italian opens, and was ranked among the top five doubles teams in the world and in the top 15 in singles around 1977.

Hansen-Dent spent some of his childhood in Australia, where the family lived for a few years until he was 14 or 15. As a youngster, tennis was always optional for him.

“My parents haven’t ever pushed me,” he said. “They’ve always let me come to them.”

For a time, that meant Dent would never ask his stepson to hit, only wait to be asked.

It was that kind of supportive relationship that led Hansen-Dent to make a name for himself on the youth circuit--quite literally.

He is Brett Hansen on his driver’s license, but he decided to become Brett Hansen-Dent on the tennis court, as a way of paying tribute.

“That’s what it was,” Hansen-Dent said.

The change was Hansen-Dent’s idea, but a compliment that Dent accepted proudly.

“It’s pretty special to me,” Dent said. “If he didn’t do it, I’d still love the kid. It’s nice that he thought that much of me. I think it sounds good, too.”

Dent’s influence isn’t seen only in the name on the scoreboard, it’s also clear in Hansen-Dent’s game.

“Brett plays a very Aussie game,” Patton said. “It’s really a throwback. He has a one-handed backhand, a slice backhand. For a kid his age, a junior, he has one of the best one-handed backhands. He can hit under it and over it.

“He’s an all-court player. He has a really solid net game he probably doesn’t use as much as he should. His forehand has become a lethal weapon. His underspin backhand slides so low that an opponent has to dig a hole to get under it.”

His serve is probably the aspect of his game Hansen-Dent is seeking to improve most, but it might be something that will come only with physical maturity.

“He needs work on his serve,” Patton said. “He still has the body of an adolescent. But he’s getting great experience. Every match he’s playing one of the top college players.”

Although he aspires to play professionally, Hansen-Dent--6 feet and 158 pounds--isn’t chomping at the bit yet.

“He knows he’s got a while,” Dent said. “He’s not impatient.”

Dent thinks Hansen-Dent will start to reach his full potential around the age of 22 or 23.

“You’ve got some guys who get maturity and confidence early, like Chang or (Andre) Agassi. Others are a little later, like the European players, Miloslav Mecir or someone like that. Some guys are 23 or 24 when they hit their strides.”

Hansen-Dent is thinking of going on the Mexican satellite tour this summer, playing the tournaments there with another freshman, Marco Zuniga, who used to live in Mexico.

“Mazatlan, Acapulco, Ixtapa,” Hansen-Dent said, smiling at the prospect.

Before that, he will return to Ojai, the site of a big victory last season, for the Big West Conference championships the last weekend in April. After that, the NCAAs lie ahead, and Hansen-Dent could make the field in three categories--singles, doubles and with the Irvine team.

Whether he will play four years of college tennis is difficult to predict. Hansen-Dent wouldn’t want to leave early to live the hard life of playing endless qualifying tournaments.

“At the moment, he’s in school for four years,” Dent said.

That’s three more years for Patton, Irvine’s wordsmith of a coach, to learn to describe him.

“He has the touch of a Michelangelo, a Picasso, a van Gogh,” Patton said. “He hits the angles. He has a feel for the ball, and there’s nothing you can do to give that to someone.

“There’s a gentility about him when he plays. He’s more an artist than a truck driver. He’s going to get the job done, but he’s going to do it in a gentle way.”