Van’t Hof’s a Smash on Court

A small but vocal gallery of high school girls took its place outside the featured court at the Woodbridge Tennis Center on an afternoon in March, armed with encouraging words for the Warriors’ Shimpei Suzuki.

Even among a cheerful fan base, the unbridled optimism didn’t last long. A steady sequence of passing shots and baseline winners quickly buried Suzuki, and the crowd’s comments began to focus on his opponent, Santa Ana Mater Dei senior Kaes Van’t Hof.

Adoration is nothing new for the Monarchs’ top singles player, whose competence on the court matches his magnetic personality off it. And he never lets compliments go unnoticed.

“I like making new friends,” said Van’t Hof, who regularly tipped his cap to the crowd. “My goal is to make tennis a little cooler.”

That’s evident in his trademark look: black socks, a striped armband and a mesh cap that covers an overflowing crop of dirty-blond hair that occasionally exceeds Mater Dei’s length standards.

Van’t Hof takes pride in his attire. The other joys of high school tennis aren’t lost on him either. He plays an individual sport but is wholeheartedly involved in his team’s performance.

The Monarchs (16-5) lost, 11-7, to third-seeded Santa Barbara on Tuesday in a Southern Section Division I quarterfinal playoff contest, but in a possible preview of the section’s individual singles championship match, Van’t Hof defeated the Dons’ Blake Muller, 6-4.

Van’t Hof, who finished the regular season 33-0 and hasn’t dropped a set in the postseason, is one of the favorites in the singles draw. The round of 16 begins at 1 p.m. Friday at SeaCliff Tennis Club in Huntington Beach. The semifinal and final rounds are Saturday.

A straight-A student with a crowded schedule, Van’t Hof eschews the notion of skipping high school to train for professional tennis. He has dedicated this season to Andi Collins, a Mater Dei girls’ volleyball player who died in September of breast cancer. He wrote a note on his jersey as a sign of remembrance.

“I take pride in going to high school,” Van’t Hof said.

“No one should miss it; it’s too much fun.”

But it hasn’t been so fun for those facing him across the net this season.

Consistent from the baseline, Van’t Hof has rounded out his game by adding bulk and agility, both a product of a post-practice workout routine that includes 20 minutes of jumping rope and running stairs.

A left-hander, Van’t Hof is a physical anomaly in high school tennis. He possesses the strength to make his strokes seem effortless, especially against sleeker opponents such as Suzuki, who struggled to match Van’t Hof’s power.

“I told him, ‘You want to hit the ball a little harder?’ ” said Suzuki, who lost, 6-1, in a 13-5 Woodbridge victory.

“He has such a heavy ball.”

Van’t Hof overpowered almost all of his opponents at the Ojai Valley tennis tournament last month, losing the CIF boys’ singles championship match in three sets to Thousand Oaks’ Sam Querrey, who has decided to skip the section’s individual tournament.

Van’t Hof is ranked No. 4 in the USTA’s Southern California 18-and-under age group and No. 2 in doubles with partner Joshua Lederman of North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake.

His father, Robert, was ranked as high as No. 20 on the ATP tour in the 1980s and was an All-American at USC from 1978 to ’80.

Van’t Hof, who has decided to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending USC, already socializes with future teammates and hits with second-year Coach Peter Smith.