DECATUR - Kaes Van't Hof arrived at the Ursula Beck Pro Tennis Classic qualifying tournament sign-up at 3:45 p.m. Thursday.

But before he walked in the door of the Fairview Park Tennis Complex building and paid the $30 fee to play in the 115-man qualifier - the top eight make the main draw - Van't Hof was telling stories that had a group of fellow players' jaws dropping.

Van't Hof came to Decatur from Kansas City, where he had played in the final regular season match of the World Team Tennis league as part of the Newport Beach (Calif.) Breakers. In the WTT league, Van't Hof played in televised matches on the same mixed doubles team with Lindsay Davenport, and took on players including John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams and Anna Kournikova.

"We put a bagel on McEnroe in dubs," Van't Hof told the group of players of his 5-0 doubles win with partner Ramon Delgado. "That felt pretty good."

But Van't Hof - the son of former pro Robert Van't Hof, who as a tennis coach worked with Davenport - gave most of the credit to Delgado, and said McEnroe exacted revenge by beating he and Michaela Pastikova in mixed doubles.

"It was kind of a fluke thing that I even got involved with it," said Van't Hof, who will turn 22 next week. "A guy on the team had back surgery, so they needed a replacement. Newport Beach is my hometown, so they called me.

"It was cool getting TV time, playing against all those big names and in front of big crowds, but it was a lot of pressure," Van't Hof said. "We played 15 matches in 10 cities in 21 days. We finished yesterday in Kansas City and we didn't make the playoffs, so I drove over here."

Before turning pro and playing in the WTT league, Van't Hof graduated from USC this spring and won the NCAA title in doubles along with partner Robert Farah at the tournament in Tulsa.

"That was great moment - the best of my tennis career," Van't Hof said. "It was something I'll never forget."

But now, like most of the players at the Beck, Van't Hof will travel the country playing in United States Tennis Association Futures events trying to build rankings points and take the next step to making the ATP Tour.

"I have a finance and accounting degree, so if tennis doesn't work out, I'll go to work," said Van't Hof, who will travel from Decatur to Milwaukee, Wis., to compete in the next event on the Futures schedule after the Beck. "But you only live once, and I have the rest of my life to sit in an office, so I figure why not go for it."

Not all of the players who signed up for the Beck qualifier are professionals yet. University of Texas players Dimitar Kutrovsky, Josh Zavala and Bernhard Deussner traveled together from Austin to Godfrey for the previous Futures tournament before hitting Decatur. Though they can't earn any of the $10,000 total in prize money, they can earn USTA ranking points.

"You can earn expense money, but nobody is here to make money," said Kutrovsky, who came to Texas from Sofia, Bulgaria. "You're not going to make much money. We're here for the points and the experience."

Kutrovsky said he'd like to travel to Milwaukee for the next Futures event, but Zavala said they probably won't make it there.

"We were going to go, but we're borrowing somebody's car, and he called us and told us he needed it back," said Zavala, who is from Amarillo. "So we'll probably head back after this."

The lone Decatur player in the tournament is Sean Ragee-Nelson, who is one of four wild cards - two singles and one doubles team - that the Decatur Athletic Club is allowed to enter. Ragee-Nelson will be teamed with University of Illinois player Marek Czerwinski when the 16-team doubles tournament begins on Tuesday.

"I just wanted to get a chance to play - this is pretty much the best competition I'll see," said Ragee-Nelson, who'll be a senior at Western Illinois. "I don't have any aspirations to become pro. I just wanted to do it for the experience."

The qualifying tournament begins at 9 a.m. today and continues through Monday. The 32-player main draw singles tournament begins Tuesday, and the tournament continues through Aug. 3.

Justin Conn can be reached at jconn@herald-review.com or 421-7971.