It was a restart.

The revival of the Hawai'i Grand Prix tennis series concluded its first year yesterday with Leilani Magee and Jan Axel Tribler putting exclamation points on championships by winning one-sided singles finals in the last stop at The Oahu Club.

Before Magee knocked off 16-year-old Samantha Mathews, 6-2, 6-1, and Tribler hit the "quadfecta" against former Hawai'i Pacific teammate Mikael Maatta, 7-5, 6-0, organizers were in the midst of renovating the revival.

"We have to capture the college players or we're not going to get real strong fields in either draw," said USTA/Hawai'i Pacific Section executive director Ron Romano, whose group found the sponsors to bring the Grand Prix back after a nearly 20-year absence. "That's key. We learned a lot. At this time of year we miss the bulk of the top players."

The early plan for 2009 is to use the series as a lead-in to the Hawai'i Futures events in the fall. Futures qualifiers have been popular with local players and Hawai'i's Dennis Lajola won the Honolulu Futures, over an international field, last year. By way of comparison, previous winners of the Waikoloa Challenger, which is a step up on the USTA's Pro Circuit, include Andy Roddick and James Blake.

The 1-2 Grand Prix-Futures combination might help achieve Romano's goal of "reviving interest in competitive tennis" here. This first Grand Prix year back needed a boost. It featured fine champions, but Tribler and Magee each won all four stops (Kapalua, Kailua Racquet Club, Wailea and Oahu) and draws were small and admittedly weak.

Few college and top league players competed and juniors were basically a no-show. Tribler, 30, defeated Maatta, 32, in all four men's finals and Magee, 39, only had to play once at the Maui events because so few women entered.

"It was really disappointing," said Maatta. "From 16 and up they should all play. It's an amazing opportunity to play competitively against old folks like us that are supposed to beat you. You know they'll start beating us."

He and Tribler are exceptions to the rule here, where the best players are predominantly in college. Most are foreign and have gone home for the summer. If they all showed up the depth of the draws could be great.

Tribler, an HPU All-American from Denmark, and Maatta, an HPU All-American from Sweden, welcome it and Magee said her goal in playing was to help "bring everybody back together again" in the tennis community and "inspire others to come back." She taught clinics around the series to "help infuse more energy and excitement and inspiration into the game."

Magee, 39, won doubles at 2005 Sectionals, but calls her game "peek-a-boo tennis" now. "I disappear for a few years, leave the country or become a desk jockey," she said. "Then I win a tournament and disappear again."

Her tennis training consists of hitting with a few guys and trying to soak up all the knowledge of the coaches around her, including, recently, UH's John Nelson. He helped her with the "modern game" of "sit and hit," focusing on lower-body strength.

Mathews was born six years after Magee graduated from Seabury Hall. When their match was over, she immediately asked Magee if they could "hit again."

The teenager needed just one year to graduate from high school while being home-schooled and plans to graduate from HPU next year with a degree in marine biology. She was undefeated in singles, playing Nos. 4, 5 and 6 for the Sea Warriors this season and plans to play again next year, and the two years after that if she doesn't leave for vet school.

She showed power potential yesterday, but little consistency. The swirling wind and Magee's graceful game took over immediately.

Maatta broke Tribler in the first game of their match, but Tribler broke back to tie it and put on his black cap while up 6-5.

He didn't lose another game. One of many brilliant down-the-line shots gave him set point and Maatta double faulted. Tribler was flawless in the second set, never giving Maatta an opportunity to hit his arsenal of "junk."

"When Jan gets a lead definitely he's really tough," Maatta said. "He seems like he relaxes and then he starts hitting all these down-the-line backhands and weird killing shots I'm all confused about. Jan told me I should have come more to the net. After the match."

It wasn't quite the Grand Prix of old — a relatively lucrative, highly entertaining circuit that featured folks like Yue Wang, Rosie Bareis, Frank Del Gaudio, Rose (Thomas) Jones, Vanne Akagi and a host of hot high school players. That inspired a Tennis Magazine story characterizing it as one of the sport's greatest gigs.

But this was a restart, and something to tide tennis fans over until the 38th Kailua Racquet Club Night Doubles starts next month. Tribler and Maatta, now full-time financial advisors at John Hancock and only occasional tennis players, still have enough talent to have reached the last two Night Doubles finals together. They promise to work harder to win this year.

"Every year we say we'll start training a little earlier," Maatta said. "We haven't done it yet."

NOTES

The champions each earned $1,925 for the series, with Mikael Maatta getting $825 for second in the point standings and Jay Grollman $250 for third. Jan Axel Tribler also won a singles main draw wild card into the Honolulu Futures event in November.

Chaminade's Audra Takara was second in the women's series and Rie Yukihiro third. Samantha Mathews played only in the final event and outlasted Yukihiro, 7-5, 7-6, in a semifinal.

Former KRC Night Doubles champions Michael Bruggemann and Erich Chen, who did not play singles, won the doubles final, 6-2, 6-4, over Henry Somerville and Stefan Pampulov.