"We would not expect that he would have this talent," Manupat Lohitnavy said Friday while his son was hitting balls with instructor Larry Lewis at Rolland Moore Park's Racquet Complex.

The son, now 9 and in third grade at Dunn Elementary School, was all smiles, hitting solid groundstrokes back and forth across the net on one of the few courts that had been cleared of snow.

"Especially with this coach," Manupat Lohitnavy said. "He's usually lively when they hit." And they hit a lot.

Lewis said the boy took to the game immediately and moved quickly through the ranks of classes at the Lewis Tennis School. Two years ago, he started participating in the school's Academy, practicing and playing games against mostly high school players.

"He hangs in there really well," Lewis said. "He's up there at the net, and they're blasting balls at him, and they're a lot older - some of them are twice his age."
Bai-Tong, who said he's "almost 4-foot-9" and weighs in the "mid-60's" enjoys the challenge. He has a serve that has been clocked at 75 mph, although he's not sure he's ever reached that speed in tournament play, and a solid all-around game.

"His game is amazingly varied," Lewis said. ''He can hit good drop shots, he volleys well. He just loves the game."

Hence the bright smiles whenever he talks about tennis, let alone when he plays the game.

But underneath that joy lies a steady determination rarely found in kids his age, Lewis said.

"He's very, very focused," Lewis said. "I think that's one of the qualities that makes him a really good player and will make him a better and better player as he goes along."

Lohitnavy uses that focus to wear down opponents, returning shot after shot.

"Sooner or later," he said, "they get impatient and just make an error."

That's what he's been doing for the past two years while playing in tournaments up and down the Front Range most every weekend in the summer and about every third week in the fall and spring, his father said.

In July, he first learned that he was ranked among the top 10 players in the state ages 10 and under and decided then that he wanted to be No. 1 before the end of the year. He reached that goal last month, although Lewis said he might drop down to No. 2 when the final 2007 rankings come out since he didn't play in the final tournament of the year, and the player ranked just below him did and won the title.

"He was determined to get to No. 1, and he did it," Lewis said.

Lohitnavy said he enjoys playing basketball and soccer at school. But he plays tennis, he said, ''about every day" in the summer and ''any day that he can play" the rest of the year.

Lohitnavy's father said his son probably will play in a few Colorado tournaments this spring while traveling back and forth from Thailand with his mother, who is defending her dissertation later this month. But by next summer, the family - Bai-Tong has a 3-year-old brother, Jack - will be back in his parents' hometown of Phitsanulok, Thailand, about 200 miles north of Bangkok.

And, his father knows, he'll still be playing tennis whenever he can.

"He really enjoys it."