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Reflections on the National 75 and 80 Clay Court Championships
Gary Weichmann | March 2024

Abstract — Have you ever attended a national super-senior tournament a year before you intend to play it it for the first time? Gary Weichmann, a Wisconsinite who started playing the game in his 30s and quickly fell in love with it, did exactly that last year. Gary was “a man with a plan”: to learn as much as he could about elite players. What Gary learned proved quite interesting and instructive, as you will read in his personal story.

 Last September, I attended the National Men’s 75 and 80 Clay Court Championships in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I had been searching for a Super Senior Level 1 tournament to attend close to where I live in Wisconsin, and there were none. I consulted the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association tournament listings, and the next event in my 75-age group was in Virginia. I did a little research and Google Maps estimated the trip to be 16 hours—approximately 1,100 miles.

I knew the travel was going to take longer because I wouldn’t follow their recommended route through six major cities, and I didn’t want to drive a lot of hours every day. So, I planned a different route through some scenic areas, booked my rooms, and looked for good restaurants along the way. It was going to be an eventful three-day trip, one way, by myself.

The purpose and primary thrust of this decision was because I became eligible to play in the 75s in 2024, and I was contemplating playing some super-senior tennis events. Preferably singles. I’ve watched most of the senior events available on YouTube. The level of fitness and consistency of play is exceptional. Nothing fancy, just good solid ball strikers. It reminds me of the classic style played in the 1980s. A style similar to my own. Flatter trajectories, not a lot of heavy topspin, more strategy and placement than power. A drop shot here, a defensive lob there.

But I wanted to see it live and in person. I wanted to witness the “best of the best.” I wanted to see the personalities. How did the players manage their energy? What strategies did they employ? I wanted some takeaways from the actual play. Something to take home with me. What skills and fitness would I need to be competitive?

I started playing tennis late in life after being a pretty skilled and successful college baseball and basketball player at Lakeland College. As I aged, my ability to compete against younger athletes in those sports diminished. But I needed something to play. So at age 36, I took up tennis and I couldn’t put the racket down. It became my passion. I became a student of the game. I read all the books and played as often as I could.

My job involved traveling the Midwest by car. I managed the food sanitation chemistry for Hydrite Chemical, visiting primarily cheese and meat manufacturing plants and introducing our chemistry and procedures. I would be gone for several nights so I purchased a Lobster ball machine so I could practice on the road when I couldn’t find a practice partner. I continually improved my skills and level of play. I played matches, leagues, and tournaments. I was ranked No. 9 in the Midwest in the 45s and won a couple of state championships. I attended 30 US Opens, three French Opens, and three Wimbledons, and studying the best players in the world gave me more insights about technique, tactics, and training.

When I turned 62, I was able to retire and bought a sailboat. A beautiful Catalina 445. It took me away from the game for a while. I lived on the boat and sailed, sometimes with my wife, son, or both—but mostly single-handed. I primarily sailed Lake Michigan and Huron. One summer, my son and I sailed to New York City. I loved sailing, but I never forgot tennis. Age caught up with me again and sailing a 45-foot boat single-handed became a lot of work. I sold the boat and went “back to the racket.”

I reviewed the draws in both divisions and decided to arrive in Virginia Beach on Tuesday afternoon. The plan was to find the tennis club, check out the venue, maybe watch a match or two, and find my hotel and a good restaurant. The seeded players had first-round byes in the Tuesday morning session and played in the afternoon session sometimes against a player who played a match that morning.

Seeded players are usually successful in their first round, so the plan was to attend matches on Wednesday. But I was fortunate to catch a match between Brian Cheney, the No. 2 seed in the 75s, and John Walton in the afternoon session. It was a battle, and I overheard more than one person comment that Walton should have been seeded. Maybe so, because Walton pulled an upset in two close, well-played sets. The level of tennis was excellent from both men. Their post-match demeanor was exemplary. I left thinking I was in for a couple more days of great tennis.

On Wednesday, I found a Dunkin’ Donuts for my morning addiction on the way to the club. The Virginia Beach Tennis and Country Club is private and set back off a busy avenue, nestled in a little wooded area, in a nice part of the city. There are 16 Har-Tru/green clay courts. The clubhouse is a large metal building with a fitness center, eight indoor hard courts, and a good-sized lounge area where players check in. I found a comfortable chair in the lounge area and settled in to watch the players arrive. I was dressed like a player, so I fit into the group. I’m an affable person, and it wasn’t long before I was having conversations with some players waiting to get a court assignment. They’d ask if I was playing. I’d share with them my plans to play next year and that I was there studying players and their level of play. They complimented me on traveling so far to watch them play and that my intentions must be for real. Everyone appeared to already know one another. It was a tennis fraternity.

There were two players that I really wanted to see play. Brent Abel and Jimmy Parker. They were No. 1 seeds in the 75 singles and 80 singles, respectively, and I had watched them play on YouTube several times. I had also watched some of Abel’s “Gold Ball Hunting” podcasts and enjoyed his gregarious persona.

I caught Abel warming up with his doubles partner, Brian Cheney. I was sitting in a chair admiring the consistency of their strokes, and Brent asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was there to see him play. He acted shocked. After finishing his warmup, he took the time to introduce himself to me and also introduced me to Brian. He didn’t have to do what he did, but I really appreciated it.

I watched two more of his matches. He had classic strokes. Great consistency and rhythm. There were no dominating strokes, but he knew how to set up a point. What struck me most was his attitude. He was confident and really enjoyed playing the game. A good player for me to emulate. He went on to win the singles and partnered with Brian to win the doubles.

Next up was Jimmy Parker. I'd watched him a lot on YouTube and marveled at how he won points. He hit the right shot just when he needed to. He made it look easy. And he used the drop shot to perfection. Well disguised at just the right moment. His opponent often didn’t even make a move to get to the ball. The rest of his game was rock solid and he didn’t make many errors. I watched him play in the quarterfinals. Jimmy was playing the 80s and moving like players in the 60s. Effortlessly. Another good player whose style I should note. He also won the singles and doubles titles without dropping a set. 

Another player who impressed me was Al Yearwood. Al is the only guy I saw play who hits a two-handed topspin backhand. He moves well and has a pretty steady game. But what I remember the most was his determination. He won the first set, lost the second set, and rather unusually played a full third set rather than a 10-point tiebreaker to win the third set. It was a battle and he never quit.

Most of the unseeded players I watched were also fit and had solid games. They played their best and never quit. They were a little less consistent but not for lack of desire to play well. Senior tennis, like professional tennis, has a level of players who are just better than the rest. It is what it is!

Here are my takeaways from the tournament:

1. Fitness: Most everyone was physically fit. As one player said to me, “There are no fat guys at this level of play.” Everyone was prepared to play. They played each match for well over an hour, sometimes two, knowing they might have to do it all over again the next day.

2. Movement: Their fitness enabled almost everyone to move well. They were generally able to get to balls both laterally and vertically. They chased down lobs and drop shots. They also used their energy wisely.

3. Consistency: Players were generally consistent with good shot selection. Not a lot of winners but shots with good direction often eliciting an error. Little or no sloppy play in the later rounds.

 4. Serving: No dominating, big serves. Placement was the priority, primarily to the opponent’s backhand. Few aces and double faults. Some serve and volley when appropriate.

5. The drop shot: Used often, strategically, and usually well-disguised. Often a winner or used to set up a winning next shot.

6. Slice backhand: Everyone I saw, except Al Yearwood, predominately played with a slice backhand. Maybe to better disguise their drop shot. Maybe the preferred shot on clay. Maybe both.

All that said, the single greatest takeaway from attending this event was the integrity and character of all the players. Every player acted professionally. Each player had a different style of play and personality. But each was accepted by the group. The atmosphere in the player’s lounge, as well as on, and around, the courts was energizing and contagious. Exactly the people I want to be associated with.

We live in crazy times. Contentiousness, anger, and anxiety everywhere. It all went away at this event. It was about men trying to play tennis at the best of their ability and having fun doing it. Smiles on the faces of the winners and losers. Congratulations all around by men doing what they like to do.

Now the ball is in my court. Can I compete at this level? What am I prepared to do to achieve that?

I’ll conclude with a quote from Michael Jordan that I put on my bulletin board—“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others MAKE it happen.”

Stay tuned.

GEEZERDOM
Jimmy Parker | Dec 2023

We’ve all heard the old platitude about how “old age is a ‘nother country.” Well, I’m here to tell you that being a geezer tennis player at least rates as “foreign territory.” We come with all sorts of straps, wraps, fake joints, liniments, potions, and huge racquets. Our backs go out more often than we do. We run like the winded. You’ll see us limp out to the courts….. where a miracle of sorts takes place! Guys who could barely walk are suddenly sprinting (sort of) for dropshots! The tennis court acts like a fountain of youth.

One of my geriatric buddies tells me that he no longer buys green bananas. No, we really don’t know how much longer we have left, but by God, we’re not giving up tennis until we can no longer crawl to the courts. Over my thirty years at the Houston Racquet Club, we had three members (all were men) croak while they were playing tennis. Their widows all said the same thing: “That’s the way he would have wanted to go.” No protracted time at the nursing home, no long drawn out drain on the family finances. Departing before most of your cheese has done slud off the toast – it’s not all bad!

Of course on that cheese thing, there have been a few exceptions. One gentleman I knew had been suffering from Alzheimers (also known as CRS – Can’t Remember Shit) for some time. But he knew he still liked to play tennis. So he’d come out, and his dear friends whom he’d been playing with for decades, would guide him around the court between points. Once the point started, he was fine. He’d nail overheads and all the rest. He never really knew whether he was winning or losing, but he was having a blast. He was a little like Glen Campbell, who could still tour and play his guitar long after he was unable to recall what season it was.

And the stories! It goes without saying that the older we get, the better we were. We may be getting worse as players, but our stories sure keep getting better with time. We all share the experiences of a different era. For instance, we geezers are so old that when we were growing up, you actually had to win to get a trophy! I miss the days when things worked with an ON/Off switch. When I start a story with “The other day…” I could be referring to any time between last week and 20 years ago. My wife Ellen tells me that I should at least double any length of time I come up with in my recollections.

If there are a bunch of us sitting around swapping lies over beers, there will always be the name none of us can come up with. “He was that skinny redhead who used to play dubs with (can’t remember his name either but he went to Slippery Rock). Left-handed. A bit dicey on the line-calls.” Somebody will eventually remember, which of course will lead to a whole new cache of yarns and connections. Not to brag, but my memory is still pretty good. Yesterday I went into another room and actually remembered why I went in there! It was the bathroom, but still…

It’s kind of weird being the same age as old people. But it does trick people into thinking you’re an adult. This past year I was sitting on a bench with my opponent before we went out to play our match. I told him that he sure didn’t look 80. He said “Wait until you hear me stand up!” He did give me a suggestion that he’d heard. He said naps could prevent old age, especially if you take them while driving.

There’s no doubt the game has changed for us. There are definitely more “Yours!” and fewer “I got its.” There are more matches marked “retired” and “walkover due to injury.” It’s harder to put our tennis shorts on without falling. But another thing that’s changed is most of the jerks are gone. There used to be some players you knew would hook you if they could. But the other players get to know pretty quickly just who those guys are. And if you’re one of them, no one really wants to hang out with you, have a beer, go to dinner, etc. So how much fun could it be going to a tournament where everyone knows you’re a cheat?

The getting in shape part presents another conundrum. It’s a little like how there’s a much smaller window of time now between when you’ve gotten warmed up, and when you’ve gotten tired. What used to be hours may have shrunk to a matter of minutes these days. And there’s an art to getting ready to play a tournament. If you try too many kick-butt workouts in preparation, you’re too likely to injure yourself and not make it to the competition at all. But you still have do stuff to get yourself ready to play well! Maybe the adherents of balance-in-your-life might have been right all along!

We’ve all heard these guys who will tell you that they didn’t start playing tennis until they were 40. So now they’ve only been playing for forty years? That’s no excuse - the guys playing Wimbledon have only been playing for fifteen or twenty! The beauty of tennis is that you can keep improving in at least some areas of the game, regardless of age. For instance, you might become more patient, better at diagnosing opponents or changing the momentum of a match, etc. You might even be able to stop foot-faulting or tweak a grip to strengthen a particular shot. Some players achieve their highest rankings in the 80’s on up. All that really matters though, is that you’re better than your former self in the areas that challenge you.

Just remember that today is the oldest you’ve ever been, but the youngest you’ll ever be. (But please don’t ask me why you should remember it….)

 Jimmy Parker

Geezer

Against The Ball Machine
Misha Khishchenko | Sep 2023

It’s an early afternoon and the temperature is 90 degrees F or 32 C.
I am practicing with a ball machine. We are not partners. We are basically enemies.
A ball machine is an interesting creature. You put about 75-100 balls in the basin of the machine and then program this beast.
You can choose many different options – the speed of the ball, rate, height, spin. You then turn the machine on, run on another side of the court and get ready to be bombarded by little yellow bastards that have no mercy. 20 minutes and I am all drenched. We have cold water on a court and that helps a lot for about 30 seconds. I wet my towel and poured water over my head.
Today I intend to practice my forehand. I hit about 20 balls and start cheating, by switching to backhand or pretending to hit drop shots from a baseline. It helps to recover and then back to the forehand.
Feels like this torture is never going to end. Finally, the machine runs out of balls and I turn it off. It needs a break as well. I go around the court, collect all the balls and put them back in the basin.
Machine is ready, I am not.
One minute break and I am ready for a torture part 2


Part 2.  - Next day

The ball machine went on strike today. It didn’t want to cooperate at all, no matter how hard I tried to program it. I even invited our maintenance guys to help me, but we didn’t succeed.
I set it up, so I can hit from the baseline. Machine reprogrammed itself and started sending the balls to me with very high speed and power. I immediately moved back several feet, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to return any balls at all.  With my back to the fence I did my best, but most of my returns were landing short on the opposite side of the court. I felt like playing a professional, because I could barely get my racquet on a ball.
I decided to continue with a torture and then reprogram the machine.
It refused to listen and my practice was ruined. The beast probably got overheated. I don’t have any other explanation.

Tennis and Metaphysics
Jimmy Parker | May 2023

Ah, metaphysics. Something recondite, abstruse, hidden, difficult to explain, esoteric, even mystical. And yet we tennis players deal with it every time we step on the court. The game befuddles us with its complexity and astounds us with its simplicity. It all comes to a head in the instant when we contact the ball—where the intangible becomes manifest. Where our intention is played out in the physical world. It’s truly where the rubber meets the road.

     Beneath the surface of the physical game, which we can watch on television, there lies a complex of currents invisible to the eye. Every shot that is struck by the players we’re watching is the culmination of a process that involves a veritable plethora of factors. And in match conditions, each shot selection decision is made in fractions of a second. Yet it would be almost impossible to pin down all the factors that went into the choice of that particular shot! Was it the position of the opponent, the wind, our own confidence in a particular response, habit, the difficulty level of the incoming ball, what our coach told us before the match, our prior experience with this situation, scoreboard pressure, or what? What influenced our instantaneous selection of the shot we chose? Maybe all of the above, and even more.

     The demand that we stay fully in the present moment is another aspect of performance that transcends the boundaries of a tennis court. Do we really have any other choice? Our lives are lived in a series of ever-flowing present moments. Everything else is the dead past or the imagined future! How else would it be possible to have perfect timing? In that sense, the ball serves as a wonderful metaphor for the present – it is always where it is now! If our focus in the present lapses, we make errors – a perfect lesson in the power of now!

     We as competitors are well aware of the daunting difficulties that all of this poses. Like life itself, it presents us with layers of ​paradox—relaxed intensity, unconscious consciousness, fluid exertion. Just when we think we’re beginning to make headway with certain challenges that the game confronts us with, we’re likely to have our egos served to us in a bucket.

     And speaking of that, what role indeed does the ego play in our growth anyway? Is it a cruel taskmaster or an impetus to achievement? Yet another factor that plays into the mix.

     Even elite pros blunder in their shot selection, and sometimes even on pivotal points. During Jannik Sinner’s impressive 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-2 victory over No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in the Miami Open semifinals, the 21-year-old Italian led 4-3 in the tiebreaker with two serves to come. The next point featured a typical hard-hitting rally. Sinner ended it will an ill-advised forehand drop shot that plopped in the middle of the net. Clearly disappointed at his poor shot selection, Jannik lost the next three points and the critical tiebreaker, 7-4.

     One of the things that has always drawn me into the world of sport is the way that it presents us with a microcosm. So much of what makes sport so alluring is that it reflects the world at large. Many of the same dramas that play out in our lives are there on the playing field. How else to explain why millions of fans are drawn to spend billions of dollars to vicariously experience what is happening there in the heat of competition? Hopes, tragedy, dreams, failure, disappointment, and exhilaration—the agony and the ecstasy. They’re all a part of the human tapestry, and if we look and feel closely, all of them surface in sports. (Our sport in particular because it is such an individual game.)

     As you have undoubtedly noticed, tennis is complex. At its highest levels, it demands almost preternatural skills. Otherworldly reflexes, coordination, and speed are essential. The game provides the opportunity to exercise a multiplicity of physical skills with spontaneous creativity and demands contributions from our mind and character. If you play for long enough, you notice that unnumbered nuances come into play. The trials and fiendish frustrations, the demand for patience, the rigors of preparing for peak performance, all give us glimpses of ourselves, for better or worse. One path to enlightenment just might involve time spent on a tennis court!

     As tennis and my inner self became better acquainted over the years, I saw reflected in the game many questions that I was encountering from within. Does every thought, feeling, word, and deed have consequences? Could a simple change of attitude affect and possibly even determine outcomes? Could visualizing goals really make their attainment more likely? Does the lens through which I choose to observe the world really determine what I see? Can that lens be constructively changed? What role does our will play, and how much is already written in the book of karma? Can we both “go with the flow” and yet proactively shape our future by having a clear vision of what we truly want? Can we be fully invested in our efforts and still practice non-attachment? What impact on our spiritual development is involved here?

     The multi-faceted tennis experience can provide the crucible in which to experiment with how we can grow. Small changes and tiny adjustments ultimately yield big differences. Just maybe, our unfoldment on the court helps us to become a self in touch with more of our own potentials.

     There is so much work to be done in the process of our becoming the best version of ourselves! Can we actually evolve ourselves enough to treat the imposters of Triumph and ​Disaster just the same? What a saintly achievement that would be!

     I have a feeling that tapping into these often-hidden pathways in our development is the gateway to marvelous realms. They hint at the outer boundaries of human potential. So, the way out is in—into the deeper layers of our psyches. Therein lie the keys to the kingdom.

     This happily reminds me of one of my favorite quotations from Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy that sums it all up pretty well:

     “The game is a mighty teacher, always ready to lead us on. In all of that, it is a microcosm of the world’s larger discipline—in it, you glimpse the essence of what the world demands. It is a good stage for the drama of your self-discovery. As you grow in the game, you come to see the things you learn there in every other place.”

Playing Longer and Better With Less Injuries
Chip Travis | April 2023

As senior players, we all face similar problems with our tennis abilities. We have aging, aching and weakened joints and muscles. Some of which have been permanently injured, some of them surgically repaired. None of them are as good as they were in our prime 40 or 50 years ago. If only we could turn back the clock! The actions that improved our tennis abilities when we were juniors and college aged were more instruction, more practice, more cross-training of strength and endurance. I don't know about you, but my ability to spend more time on court in pursuit of improvement is limited by my physical endurance over a span of time. Physical stress is cumulative. We cannot sustain increased physical stress over a prolonged period as when young. If you can, good on'ya mate! There are scientific studies of injury prevention, with recommendations usually for a prolonged warm up and some dynamic stretching---almost the same thing as applied. Just gently do the motions of tennis with increasing intensity until full motion and speed.

There are other actions anyone can take that go beyond the warm-up and dynamic motion stretches. Here are three I have used for many years.

The first is strength training in the weight room. While tennis is not thought of as a strength sport, the stresses on shoulders, elbows, wrists in performing very stressed but precise movements is obvious. Do you remember the days of Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova? Their weight room exercises revolutionized the sport, such that all professionals are now in the weight room hours every week. Movement on the court is stressful to low backs, hips, knees and ankles. Observation of any senior tournament reveals the majority of players wearing braces on various body parts. Some therapies are unseen---the joint replacement of shoulders, knees, hips. I am playing on an artificial left knee and an amputated right leg orthotic. After my professional tennis coach career ended, I became a chiropractor with a specialty for sports and ballet injury patients. I have a post graduate certification in rehabilitation. 

Weight training makes perfect sense for tennis injuries before they happen as well as rehabilitation if they occur. If you don't already belong to a gym with weight machines specific for a body part like quadriceps, hamstrings, low back, and abs, some Medicare programs offer a "Silver Sneakers" plan. It provides a FREE gym membership. I joined an Anytime Fitness gym at no cost to me. I already work out at my tennis club gym, but it does not have all the machines I want.

 The key is to start slow and easy, using weights that you can lift at least 20 times in moderate speed repetitions, then increase weights as you strengthen. A second set of 20 repetitions after doing other exercises is helpful for faster progress. It is important to do opposing muscles to maintain balance, such as biceps/triceps, quadriceps/ hamstrings, adductors/abductors. Another factor must be noted: a seriously arthritic joint can be best exercised with only 3 repetitions. The lift phase is done in 10 seconds, hold for 2 seconds, and lower in 10 seconds, repeat two more times. This called the "super slow" method, and strength increases at least as quickly as 20 repetitions with 2 seconds for each phase. The weight lifted should be 50% of the other 20 rep method, and increase as the 3 reps is easier. Elastic stretch bands can be used for many tennis motions.

Another way to decrease injuries is to take vitamin D3 supplements. (I know some of you are thinking this cannot be true, so I invite you to go to Pubmed.gov and type in "athletic injury vitamin D".) I have taken between 7,000 IU and 10,000 IU for many years, sustaining a blood level of 65 to 85 ng/ml. Ng/ml should not be confused with mmol/L, a 2.5 multiple of ng/ml. Those levels are not dangerous. Every NFL team measures D3 levels in their players and provides D3 supplements. 5,000 IUs (125 mcg, micrograms) should get you over 50 ng/ml or higher. That level is highly protective of many cancers!  

As D3 is known as the "sunshine vitamin," it seems logical that tennis players should have an adequate blood level. Not so, as vitamin D3 is produced by ultraviolet B rays, not UVA rays. UVB rays cannot penetrate the atmosphere at angles greater than 45'. This means that the sun must be high in the sky, between 10 AM and 2 PM on a relatively cloudless day, for D3 levels to increase. If a person lies flat on back or stomach with only short pants in the summer for 20 minutes between 10 and 2, the amount of D3 produced can equal or exceed 20,000 IUs. So, a supplement of 5-10,000 IUs is not excessive. Older individuals do not make as much D3 as younger persons. Because of the sun's relative low position in the northern US from November to April, no amount of sun exposure will produce D3 at latitudes above 39' N latitude (a line from Washington DC through Kansa City, Denver to Sacramento) during those months!

Two ways of increasing your tennis performance, each will enhance your overall health!

Cardiac ATTR Amyloidosis: My New Reality
Roy C. Riley | rcr2105@gmail.com
August 2021

Man, I love to play. Basketball, running, cycling, hiking and, most of all, tennis. And I was good at them all. Not great, but certainly good enough to compete and make a respectable go at it.

Why was I good? Because I worked at it. I loved competing, but most of all, I loved getting and staying fit. No one was going to “out-shape” me. I once read: “If you don’t have passion for your sport, find another sport.”

I had passion for them all!

I’m a healthy person, always have been. I eat well (no fast foods, mostly organic), drink very moderately, and rarely miss a day of exercise. In fact, like so many of my fellow NSMTA members, when it came to exercise, I was totally driven. I was the guy who could play three hard sets of tennis, then ask someone to feed me more buckets of balls, and then head home to change and go for a five-mile hike. In addition, all my doctors and tests said I was in perfect health, except for my athletic-related injuries. Perfect blood pressure, cholesterol, bloodwork.

With my vigorous exercise routine came injuries. Knee surgeries (one replacement), rotator cuffs, neck (likely a result of a cycling accident), elbow surgery. Not that strange for us lifetime athletes. We punish ourselves, so we expect the injuries, right.

Then came the AFIB, but that too can be exercise-related. After all, Marty Fish, Billy Jean King, Larry Bird and lots of other athletes have it. I had an ablation, got back in rhythm, and went right back on my athletic way.

As I began retirement about four years back, I began to play more tennis. I got back into playing tournaments. But something was not right. I just didn’t feel good. I kept feeling sick, tired and kept having nagging little injuries like hamstrings, glutes, elbow. 

Then last summer, my AFIB came back. I had another ablation, but this one didn’t work. And the worst thing was I had no breath. I got winded just walking down my driveway, my feet and lower legs were swollen with edema. I couldn’t play tennis, I couldn’t hike, and I felt miserable.

Frustrated, I went to a new cardiologist in Sarasota in January. Once again, he said, you’re in perfect health except for AFIB. Oh wait, I see you had bi-lateral carpal tunnel release? Yes, I did, along with a bicep tendon tear, numerous trigger finger surgeries.

He sent me over to the hospital for a new scan called a PYP. Three days later, I was diagnosed with a rarely diagnosed and incurable disease called Amyloidosis. I have the “wild type” attr, which attacks my heart and connective tissues in my body. 

This disease is not curable, but it is treatable. I’m on a brand new drug to treat it, I have a team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic, and I will soon be officially put on the national heart transplant list. Also, there are a lot of promising changes coming with the potential to lead to a cure, hopefully before I need that transplant. 

This disease is rarely diagnosed, but likely not as rare to have as was once thought. I encourage you to read up on it and take an inventory of your own health, especially if you have had AFIB and/or bi-lateral carpal tunnel.

Being in great shape and overall good health is playing a vital role in helping me fight this disease and stay alive until a cure comes. So please, keep fit and keep hitting the ball.

Oh, and one last thing ... if I end up getting a new heart, I’m putting in for one that’s just like Federer’s! You guys at the top better look out.

I’m Cruising Through My 70s With Tennis
Bert Stratton
bertstratton@gmail.com
July 2021
This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2021

When I was young, I lost to wily old guys. Now I’m wily enough to beat the older guys.

My tennis buddies sound like middle schoolers when they talk about age differences. A year, plus or minus, is a big deal. “When’s your birthday, Bert?” I’m 71. “Wow, you’re just a baby!” I’m a baby if you’re 73. Each additional year of wear and tear counts on the courts, at least in singles. Ask Roger Federer. My opponent, Brooks, demolished me and afterward guessed my age at 74. Aced again. Brooks was born in 1955. I was born in 1950.

I keep track of birth years. It’s easier than asking your opponent his age after every match. Ivan (1948) and I stopped our match because his heart was racing and he was lightheaded. “I don’t know how to work the defibrillator here, and I’m no doctor,” I told him. He may have atrial fibrillation, like my buddy Carl (1948) who is no longer playing tennis.

Jimmy (1958) and I split sets. He was the quarterback of his high-school football team and wants to play basketball and tennis until age 70, at least. He made this announcement 10 years ago. Now in his early 60s, he’s thinking about dropping the basketball part.

I remember when Jimmy was out of commission in his 50s with plantar fasciitis. I was glad Jimmy was hurt. Guys in their 50s, they think they’re going to be pain-free forever. It’s sick fun to watch them get zapped by the middle-age hand buzzer.

I ran into Ken (1933), who was an all-star on the University of Pennsylvania’s lacrosse team in 1955. Ken played singles tennis until he was 78. “You have to know when to quit, but it’s impossible to know,” he told me. “I never know.” He also stopped playing lacrosse, squash, basketball and singles. His advice: “Take up painting.”

“I already do that,” I said. (Translation: I play clarinet.)

I played Steve, a 74-year-old overweight guy with emphysema who smoked for 40 years. He used junk shots, spin and pace, and he didn’t move. I lost. He reminded me of all the wily old guys I lost to when I was a kid. I would enter community tournaments, and old guys would beat me with placement and finesse, while I—with youthful gusto—walloped balls against the back fence. Steve told me he was going to die of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder someday.

“Well, at least you know what you’re going to die from,” I said.

“Or I might get hit by a bus,” he said.

He didn’t get hit by a bus right away. We scheduled a follow-up. “I’m going to beat that creep,” I told my wife.

“You don’t have to dehumanize your opponent,” she said.

I won the next match, 6-3, 6-2. I repeatedly drop-shotted Steve, a man as mobile as the Statue of Liberty (1886). I became a wily old guy.

Congrats to the Gold Ball Champions
April 2021

Established in 2002, the Gold Slam Award recognizes adult and senior competitive players who have won all of the national championships played in the same division throughout the year. All such players are automatically selected for the awards.

Gold Ball NSMTA Members:

• Tom Rettenmaier Mxd 70’s

• Dean Corley  Mxd 75’s

• Wilbur Jones Mxd 80’s

The Challenges of a Tournament Director
Fernando Velasco
fernantenn@gmail.com
March 2021
* This article was originally published in the CATA Newsletter, February 2021

The Pope and a Tournament Director died on the same day and went to heaven. St. Peter greeted the Pope first and asked him what he did for a living. The Pope was sent to a beautiful mansion to spend eternity. Next, came the Tournament Director who was asked what he did for a living. St. Peter sent him to one of the biggest castles in heaven. Surprised, the Pope challenged St. Peter on the selection, and his response was: “Yes, you as the Pope, did much good in your life, but the Tournament Director suffered much more, thus he gets the bigger place.”

Interesting perspective from the challenges that TDs have on organizing and running tournaments. In the past 60 years, I have had the honor to play, organize and lead local, city, state, national and international tournaments. As many other experienced TDs, our goal has been to learn from each one and improve for the many more tournaments we still have to do.

Following are some of the challenges that Tournament Directors face:

• Planning:

  • Tournaments are planned almost a year ahead trying to find the proper date
    and not to conflict with similar tournaments in the area (usually 75 miles radius)

  • Finding sites to host the event.

  • Selecting Referee and Officials.

  • Hiring/Seeking Site Directors and Volunteers.

  • Ordering tennis balls, trophies and players’ gifts.

  • Finding sponsors to defray the cost of the event.

• Organizing:

  • Writing and posting guidelines for the tournament home page, with the hopes
    that players will read them……

  • Making all efforts to communicate with players not registered properly prior to
    the deadline.

  • Receiving, by the deadline, registrations from the players.

  • Receiving “late” registrations and trying to accommodate players.

  • Matching partners to make sure that BOTH players are registered and are
    committed to team up for the doubles events.

• Scheduling:

  • Review each division and decide on formats based on the number of entries.

  • Communicate with players when divisions are combined.

  • Select sites where each division will be played depending on the courts available
    and size of draws.

  • Select seeds and post them.

  • Schedule the matches.

  • Look for possible conflicts when players are playing in more than one event and
    correct them.

  • Post draws and schedules.

• Operating the tournament:

  • Make sure that all sites are open and available to host the event.

  • Communicate with Site Directors and Volunteers.

  • Start the tournament on time as conditions dictate.

  • Communicate with players when delays or changes are made.

  • When unsafe conditions occur:

    • Make safe decisions and communicate via text, email, phone, match app, etc.

• If conditions improve, communicate with players.

  • Play as many matches as conditions allow.

  • Give medals/trophies to the winners.

  • Take pictures for their records.

  • Send documents and payments to the Section.

• Post Tournament:

  • Have staff, referee, officials, site directors, and host clubs, write an evaluation
    describing: good things that occurred, challenges met, and recommendations on how to improve.

  • Complete Profit and Loss Analysis and share with Committee and Staff.

  • Send thank you notes to players for participating and ask for suggestions on
    how to improve future events.

  • Meet with Committee Members and Staff for planning the same event in the
    future.

Only by completing this cycle can we offer and improve our future events. Players can be impatient, rude and sometimes insulting both in person and on “social” media when they don’t understand the challenges that we face. Whenever I played my local, state, national and international tournaments, I always made a point to write a thank you letter (yes, at one time that is all we had) and now an email or even a phone call to thank them. My four children followed that tradition when playing junior tournaments and still do whenever we play National Family events. The TDs are very appreciative of this “small” step. So next time you play a tournament, please be understanding and appreciative of the efforts that the teams put together. We, Tournament Directors, are trying to get to the “castle” in heaven without much “suffering.”

Arthur and Me: A Fond Remembrance
Jimmy Parker
prkrtennis@aol.com
February 2021

Arthur Ashe came to St. Louis in the fall of 1960 because white officials barred him from entering tournaments and competing against whites at the segregated venues in his native Richmond, Virginia. (They continued to exclude Blacks from tournaments for years after Arthur left.) How he happened to arrive in St. Louis, itself a border city with vestiges of Jim Crow, is a story of the racial forces at work at the time. I was moved to write about my time with Arthur after witnessing the ongoing struggle for social justice that still has been front-page news this past year.

St. Louis in the Fifties and Sixties was experiencing an unlikely golden age of tennis. The tennis hotbeds of the time were California, Texas, and Florida, where tennis could be played year-round. But St. Louis had a secret sauce—“The Armory,” where five, lightning-fast, wooden courts enabled denizens to play tennis during the winter. Out of this era came four men who won Wimbledon titles, and three women who were good enough to reach Grand Slam finals. (Butch Buchholz, Chuck McKinley, Jimmy Connors, and Arthur, plus Carol Hanks Aucamp, Justina Bricka, and Mary Ann Eisel.) The city produced as many ranked players as the states of Texas, California, and Florida!

Arthur’s mentor and coach at the time was Dr. Walter Johnson, a black physician and tennis fanatic who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Dr J, as he was known, foreshadowed the Dr J of basketball legend.) He had been instrumental in the development of Althea Gibson, the first woman of color to win a Grand Slam tennis title at the 1956 French Championships. Arthur spent several summers living at Dr J’s house and obeying a strict tennis regimen there. In cahoots with Arthur’s father, Arthur Sr., and Dick Hudlin, a black tennis advocate and teacher in St. Louis, the troika conspired to have Arthur finish his high school career in St. Louis. All of this was unknown to Arthur, who received the news of his imminent departure just three weeks before he was to leave Richmond!

In coming to St. Louis, Arthur would be able to practice with elite players like Butch Buchholz, the first player to win the junior Grand Slam (the U.S., French, Australian, and Wimbledon junior titles), Chuck McKinley, a future Wimbledon Champion and U.S. Davis Cupper, Cliff Buchholz, seeded No. 1 at Kalamazoo our last year in the juniors, and me, one of the better juniors in the country. And of course, in the city there were many other players of considerable skill for him to play.

And so it was that Arthur came to live with the Hudlins, who lived in a racially mixed neighborhood close to the suburbs. It was not an entirely happy arrangement, with Dickie, the Hudlin’s ninth-grade son, resentful of his new housemate. My father was also an educator, and knew Dick Hudlin. Dad was a troubleshooter in the St. Louis Public Schools System, assigned as a principal to newly-integrated schools and charged with calming the waters of racial tension. He encouraged me to make Arthur feel welcome, and Arthur and I quickly became friends. We already knew each other from having played each other in the National Boys’ tournament a couple years earlier.

Then, Arthur was skinny, shy, and studious. I wasn’t so different. We immediately bonded through our love of reading, (Arthur’s mother had taught him to read before he was four years old), and sometimes while we were waiting to get on a tennis court, we’d pull out our books and find somewhere to read.

When Arthur first got to St. Louis, he and Cliff and I were pretty even tennis-wise. When the warm weather faded, we went indoors to the Armory. Most days I’d pick Arthur up after we’d gone to our respective high schools—his all black, and mine practically all white.

When we first moved inside, Cliff and I were beating Arthur regularly. Arthur was primarily a baseliner, with long flowing strokes, which were totally unsuited to playing on the slick boards of the Armory. Just about the time he was finishing his beautiful wind-up, the ball would go rocketing past him!

Fortunately, Larry Miller, the pro at the Armory, took pity on him and began reshaping Arthur’s game into a more aggressive all-court style. For free. Larry changed his grip, encouraged him to take the ball on the rise, beefed up his serve, added more topspin to his backhand, and convinced Arthur that he needed to be able to play the net. (His volley always remained a little dicey.) Arthur later credited his Wimbledon, U.S. Open, and Australian Open grass-court wins to the transformation in his game that began on the boards at the Armory.

By moving to a more northern city, Arthur by no means escaped the racial indignities foisted upon Blacks of the time. During the Civil War, St. Louis had supplied troops to both sides, and still harbored vestiges of that division. It was an eye-opener for me to watch at close range some of the just plain meanness displayed by some of my fellow whites.  

One time, I had taken him to an all-white club that I played at when a member started shouting at us. The guy came right up behind our court, and was really letting me have it for “bringing that n****r out here.” I was so upset that I wanted to ram the butt of my racket through the fence into his chin; luckily, the small holes in the fence prevented it. Afterward, I remember asking Arthur how he was able to cope so calmly with that kind of crap, and he replied, “That’s just how it is.” After a moment’s pause, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “I wouldn’t mind seeing it change, though.” Prophetic?

Another time he and I went to a little restaurant across the street from the Armory to get some food for our ravenous teenage appetites. They brought my food out, but Arthur still hadn’t gotten his. I called to the cook about it, and he waved for me to come over. He then got in my face and spat out, “Don’t you ever bring that n****r in here again!” I told him that if I had anything to do with it, I would see that no tennis player ever set foot in his restaurant again. As we walked back, I was stammering some lame apology when Arthur said simply, “It’s not your fault.” When we got back to the courts, I told Larry Miller what had happened, and he spread the word. By that time, most everyone who played at the Armory knew Arthur was something special. I’ll never know whether we really had anything to do with it, but a year later, the restaurant went under.

I came to realize that Arthur dealt with the innuendoes, the slights, both conscious and unconscious, and the open hostility in a way that was grounded in what Dr J had drummed into him. If he were indeed to become a trailblazer, or even to just be accepted into tournaments, he needed to be perfectly acceptable to the white tennis community. I never saw him throw his racket, shout, make questionable calls, or do anything that some of the rest of us junior bozos were guilty of. But long after he had become a star, I remember him warning us: “Remember, the black players that follow may not all be like me.”

Arthur’s calm demeanor and cool aloofness belied his fierce spirit. He always just wanted to be judged on the basis of himself, not as the representative of the Negro minority. But he kept running into the subtle and not-so-subtle rules of white supremacy of the time. It happened that the National Interscholastics Tennis Championships were again going to be in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in Arthur’s home state. Dr J had been fighting the battle of getting young black tennis players accepted into the draw there for years. Of course, Charlottesville still catches our twenty-first century ears based on the racial strife there a couple of years ago. Sixty years later, and it’s still an issue! Shame on us!

I’ve since learned that when the organizers realized that a black kid actually had a chance to win the tournament, they petitioned the United States Lawn Tennis Association (its name then) to not hold the tournament for a couple years. But they were not given relief, and were forced to go ahead with the event. As fate would have it, I ended up playing Arthur in the finals, and losing. I was sorely disappointed at the time. On the other hand, Dr J, who had come to watch the match, was ecstatic. That was the last time Charlottesville hosted the tournament. I was not aware at the time of any of the historical undercurrents, but as I later learned the context, I can look back and honestly say I’m happy that Arthur won that one for Dr J. 

Editor’s note: Arthur won his first USLTA national title, (he had previously won American Tennis Association national titles) the National Junior Indoor, in November 1960, upsetting Frank Froehling in a four-hour, five-set battle. Six months later, he won the USLTA National Interscholastics Championships in Charlotteville, defeating Cliff Buchholz in the semifinals and Jimmy Parker in the final.

Another thing that I understand better from the perspective of years later is a funny little bet that Arthur would sometimes try to lure me into. He would say, “I could beat you with a broomstick—wanna bet?” I guess we never really got around to playing each other with broomsticks, fortunately for me I later found out. When Arthur had first come to stay at Dr J’s, the doc made him swing at a ball on a rope in the basement with a broomstick, to groove his strokes. Apparently, Arthur spent hours swinging away. He never told me though—I read it in a book about him years later, and realized he’d been scamming me all along. If I’d looked closely enough at the time, I’m sure I would have caught that little twinkle in his eye.

As time went by, Arthur became more comfortable in St. Louis. He graduated at the top of his class at Sumner High School. He received a much-coveted tennis scholarship offer from UCLA, and would be joined there by his talented Puerto Rican friend Charlito Pasarell. He relaxed a bit with that assurance, and was already becoming a pioneer. He would be the first Black to play tennis for powerhouse UCLA. He and I continued to play doubles together even after we went away to different colleges, but eventually he needed stronger partners.

About fifteen years after Arthur left St Louis and had become an established professional star, I went out to see him at a WCT tournament he was playing. I asked him if he remembered that this club was the one that had once withdrawn my invitation to play in their junior tournament when I told them I’d be playing doubles with him. The tournament official had asked me, “He’s that negra kid isn’t he? Well ahm sorry but he’s not going to be able to play heah.” Arthur laughed and said, “Most of the wait staff here is still black, so now I get better service than the members!”

It’s easy for me to look back and see that the seeds of his greatness were already in place in those early days. It strikes me that what progress we have made in civil rights and equal justice under the law has been paid for by the suffering and unspeakable cruelty endured by generations of black people who have come before. We have come far enough that some modern Blacks today can’t really fathom that their own parents and grandparents couldn’t sit at the front of a bus, couldn’t go to certain restaurants or hotels, couldn’t even drink out of the same water fountain as whites. Arthur helped change that in his own true-to-himself way. 

In his forties, Arthur began to experience heart problems. From one of his many blood transfusions, he contracted HIV. A reporter asked him one time whether this was the toughest thing he’d ever had to face. “No,” he replied, “being a black man is.” If a man who led such a decorated and accomplished life says this, it gives the rest of us an inkling of the challenge that still faces us. We’ve come a long way, and yet still have so far to go! Will we ever be able to embrace the vision set forth by our forefathers that “All men are created equal?” As Vic Braden once said, “It’s too bad life isn’t as fair as a tennis match!”

St. Louisan Shares the Joy of Collecting Vintage Tennis Racquets
Craig Tidwell
craigwell64@yahoo.com
November 2020

Bob Dienstbach began playing tennis during the Tennis Boom of the 1970s in suburban St. Louis. Many of his fondest memories date back to that time in his life when wood racquets and white tennis balls were the order of the day. 

In his fifties, Bob found himself frequently on the road with his sales job, and one day he stumbled across an old wooden tennis racquet at a flea market. The racquet intrigued him, and with that sentimental purchase, Bob was on his way to amassing an impressive collection of vintage tennis racquets and some other artifacts from tennis’s glorious past.

Before long, Bob transformed the lower level of his home in to a virtual tennis museum. After proudly showing his family and friends his collection, he reached out to a childhood friend, NMSTA member Craig Tidwell. Craig was so impressed with the collection that he helped Bob put together a small gathering of local tennis enthusiasts for a mini Vintage Tennis Party. They had to keep the event very small due to the Covid-19 pandemic that was still present in the fall of 2020.

Looking toward the future, Bob and Craig are planning to hold similar events on an even larger scale once the pandemic is a thing of the past. They envision having the events become fundraisers for worthy tennis-oriented charities and associations in the St. Louis area. They encourage other collectors of tennis memorabilia to consider doing the same in their area.

Winners and Losers
Richard Grant
ricgrant1@gmail.com
November 2020

“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the Game.”
“Alumnus Football” – Grantland Rice

A few years ago, I played a tennis match at the Washington State Tournament at the Seattle Tennis Club. Gorgeous day. Amazing setting. My lovely wife Hattie and great friend Denny were watching. I competed well in a two-and-a-half-hour match against the No. 2 seeds in the tournament. I played with Joe Cannon, a friend of over 40 years, in an experience that drew us closer and cemented our relationship.

 But we lost. So, it sucked.

Two weeks later, I played the National 60’s Indoor at the same club with much more challenging conditions. My partner, Joe, had injured a stomach muscle and had to serve underhanded during our matches. Some of our opponents were nice; but one in particular was downright surly. At times the whole experience felt like a trial by fire, and not just because we played in the stifling heat of an indoor tournament in August.

Still, we made it to the finals of a national tournament. So, it was really cool.

Sports is about winning and losing. Isn’t it? That’s why we like it so much. In our lives filled with nuances, quandaries, indecision, and uncertainties, we can gravitate to sports’ dualistic thinking. We hear about a game or match, and we ask: Who won? Cut, dry and simple, unlike the rest of life.

This is why I tend to poo poo my lifelong addiction to sports, both as a participant and a fan. Isn’t it just a diversion, an escape from the more critical things in life? The stress on winning and losing is polarized thinking; truth is usually about both sides having merit and infinitely more.

I must be a loser if I am so caught up with winning.

But if truth is about both sides having merit, isn’t there something to say about wanting to win? Even the Bible talks about it: “Do you know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. (1st Corinthians 9:24).”

 Hmmm.

Maybe it’s just important to not run from the paradox. Winning as doing your best and competing against yourself and using your abilities is good. So is losing, and what can be learned from it. The immortal sportswriter Grantland Rice is right: how you played the game and what you take from it is most important. 

The Stick
Jeff Heely
jheely17@gmail.com
November 2020

Driving north across the Golden Gate Bridge on a Friday afternoon is one of the most beautiful drives one can make. Looking to the east, you can see scores of sailboats slicing across the bay, some with colorful spinnakers, others tacking to windward, and some under the power of their “Iron Jinnie” just cruising. To the west, if the skies are clear, you can spy the Farallon Islands, famous for the great white sharks that patrol its shores searching for unsuspecting seals and sea lions.

What a wonderful transition point to cross after a week of analyzing companies, allocating capital, and watching as Mister Market extracts his penalties for any laziness in plying our trade as hedge fund managers. Just a short 18-minute drive and I will be at the club for a competitive and enjoyable doubles match.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men are jarringly interrupted by a weekend-seeking horde of San Franciscans jamming US 101 North, barely inching their way forward. Instead of being 35 minutes early, I will be lucky to arrive on time. “Drat!”

I exit onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and try to snake my way through traffic. If I can time the lights correctly, maybe I’ll be on time or at least no more than seven minutes late.

As I pull up to the club, I see the other three exchanging rallies and glancing at the street awaiting my arrival. I jump out of my car, race into the locker room, and run to the court. “Made it!”

We fall behind 0-4 in what seems like no more than 10 minutes.

How did that happen?

* * * * * * * * * *

Two years ago, I discovered shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). It’s a great practice of absorbing the forest atmosphere; very calming and restorative. Before beginning a hike, you place a stick in front of you on the path. You don't step over the stick until you are totally ready to be “in the hike.”

I have adopted that practice into my tennis life. I literally place a stick outside the gate of the court. I wait until I am ready. Then I step over the stick and begin my play. I am present. I am here for tennis and tennis only. I don’t carry the interruptions of a tough drive or a hard conversation.

Likewise, I step over the stick after the completion of the tennis. Presence is the present I give myself and my fellow players.

Doubles Etiquette from Gary Pederson
Gary Pederson
garypederson83@yahoo.com
October 2020

In order to promote, practice, and teach correct doubles protocol and procedures on the court, my group of doubles players emphasizes that each player observe the following:

1. If a first serve is obviously long, do not hit it back to the server. It often goes right at the server's net partner, who has relaxed their guard once they see it is long.

2. After every point is completed, always return the third ball to the serving party's partner at the net before the next service. Otherwise, there is a continual delay while waiting for opponents to take the ball out of their pocket and hit it across the court to the server.

3. Observe and abide by the baseline rule when serving. This foot faulting is a violation, and becomes very distracting to the opponents and can be a hard habit to break if one enters a tournament.

4. Announce the score after every point and before serving. This is a must.

5. When the match is completed, compliment the opponents. Do not make excuses for one's own play.

6. Bring new balls to the match every time, whether you open them or not.

7. Do not tell off-color jokes during change over.

8. Do not use the term or the option of "first one in." It is not part of tennis's rules and regulations. The receiving side could just as well say "first good return."

9. When practicing serves during warm-up, if you are receiving opponents practice serves, do not practice return of serve by hitting the ball back to the server.

10. If you are unsure whether a ball landed in or out, you should ask opponents if they can make the call. If they can't, then it's in. It is a newer rule and not known by many players.

11. Observe the time limit on changeovers.

12. Do not leave any balls, cans, lids or trash of any kind on the sidelines when the match is completed.

13. Compliment opponents if a good shot is made.

14. At 30-30, the next score is 40-30 or 30-40. It is never ad in or ad out. That can only be done after 7 points are played, not 5. Often, if players get mixed up in the score and have to reconstruct the points, only 5 points need addressing, not 7. This incorrect score announcement is perhaps the most abused of them all.

15. Never put or leave your bag on the bench once play begins. It's barely big enough for 3 players. Your bag takes up two spots, so put it on the court surface or hang from appropriate hooks. Other players are simply too well-mannered to move it.

16. Each player, when beginning his service turn, should announce the set score before their first serve unless there is a scoreboard on the net post, and the score is being kept there.

17.  If play is on clay, when the match is completed, don't stall waiting for someone else to retrieve the rakes and line brushes; Go Get One!

 These rules and policies really make the match enjoyable and pleasant for all players.

Want to share your thoughts including etiquette and protocols you follow? Head over to our Forum.

How I Became a Better Doctor
Richie Cohen
rwcohenmd@gmail.com
July 2020 

I became a better doctor on the day I became a cardiac patient. On that day I experienced the helpless, vulnerable, and needy feelings of a patient dependent on and blindly trusting a physician whom I did not know. I suddenly realized how it feels to be a patient.

My entire life, I had always been an athlete in excellent shape. My seven-day-a-week daily schedule included seeing patients, being an expert psychiatric witness for disability cases, playing two hours of tennis, walking/running for one hour, and ending the evening with one hour on a stationary bike.

I get to see my children all the time. I am so fortunate to get to travel with them and play National Father-Son and Father-Daughter tournaments. We have been ranked No. 1 in the country many times. I have won sixteen gold balls in these tournaments, each symbolic of a U.S. national championship.

As a busy Board Certified Psychiatrist, I was featured in a May 2, 2011 article, “Well Being: Tennis is Doctor’s Favorite Medicine,” by Art Carey in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The writer discussed my diet and exercise regime and how I used exercise to stay healthy and to deal with the stress of being a physician.

At the end of 2018, I had a Complete Blood Count performed, and the results indicated that I had a lipid panel of a healthy 30-year-old. However, my delusional bubble burst in March 2019. We were the No. 1 seed in a National Father-Daughter Tennis Tournament in Chicago, Ill.

In our semifinal match, we had won the first set and were up 3-0. I fell, hit my head on the net post, and was feeling nauseated. I checked for bleeding and continued playing, though I was not feeling well. Five minutes later, I experienced symptoms of very extreme gastrointestinal pain and nausea. I ran off the tennis court wanting to vomit and get rid of the symptom so I could go back and finish the match. I wanted to play in the final the following day and try to win the tournament.

The kind, competent, compassionate, and warm tournament director said I looked gray, and he promptly called 911. The paramedics came and said they thought I may be having a heart attack. I was in denial since I had no chest pain and I thought I was super healthy; therefore, I could not be experiencing an acute myocardial infarction. I finally agreed to let technicians perform an EKG, and they told me that I had ST elevation. Reality finally set in and I realized I was having a heart attack. I said, “Take me to the hospital.”

At the Chicago hospital where I was taken, I told doctors and staff I was a physician. To my surprise, they did not care. I was not going to get any prioritized treatment. Despite all my devotion to medicine, I was not even getting their top physician to treat me. I was being evaluated by a resident. I felt even more deflated.

In Chicago, they performed a cardiac catheterization and put in one stent in one vessel in the right cardiac vessel. I had many questions to ask, but everyone seemed very impatient and abrupt with me, acting like this was just a very routine procedure. No one ever adequately answered my questions. I was very disillusioned. I felt very insignificant, scared, and invisible.

I was discharged a few days later and was told my heart problem was fixed. I was instructed to follow up with a cardiologist in Philadelphia when I got home.

The first night home, I experienced chest pain. I was alarmed and thought my stent may have collapsed, so I went to the emergency room of the Philadelphia area hospital I knew had the best cardiac staff. After another blood test, indicating raised troponin levels, I was informed they needed to perform another cardiac catheterization. I learned I had two more coronary artery blockages, each 95-99%, in the left ventricle.

I was shocked. How could the doctor in Chicago make such a significant and potentially deadly mistake? What happened? I would never know.

The interventional cardiologist in Philadelphia was able to repair one coronary artery, but the other blockage in the LED vessel (yes, the widow maker) had calcified too much for a stent. I would need cardiac bypass surgery. This was very unbelievable to me, and furthermore, I would have to wait two long weeks for the anti-coagulant effect of the Brilanta to wear off before I could undergo bypass surgery.

While I anxiously waited for the big day, I was calling my cardiologist, surgeon, or his nurse practitioner almost daily with questions and concerns. After all, this was a life-threatening event in my life. Thankfully, everyone involved with my cardiac care showed great patience and understanding, and promptly gave me detailed answers and explanations. The reactions of the staff made me mindful of the importance of really hearing my patients’ concerns and addressing their issues in a prompt, nonjudgmental, patient, and genuine manner.

Fortunately, my robotic cardiac bypass surgery on March 26, 2019 went very well, and I am now back to work, playing tennis, jogging slowly, and riding my stationery bike.

Patients must have patience, particularly after a near-death experience. So, after doing all the right things for six months, I returned to tournament competition at age 72. My comeback could not have turned out better. Six months after robotic cardiac bypass surgery, my daughter Julia Cohen and I won the USTA National Father and Daughter Clay Court Championships in West Palm Beach, Fla.

As gratifying as that title was, my thoughts kept returning to my almost opposite experiences as a patient in Chicago and in Philadelphia. Although I had always thought of myself as a warm, caring, and empathic psychiatrist, my experience as a cardiac patient made me realize that there is always room for improvement in treating my patients.

Remember, every doctor will become a patient one day, and the reality of illness, injury, and mortality may hit you really hard, as it did me. You may not receive any prioritized treatment, and you will know what it feels like to be helpless, vulnerable, and at the mercy of a physician. You become a patient by letting go of your ego—being the one in control all the time—and allowing yourself to turn control over to the doctor.

You can be a better doctor now if you are mindful that whatever the physical, emotional, or mental issue facing your patient, the problem may seem catastrophic to them. They need your undivided attention. Any problem is a significant event to your presenting patient. Really listen to his or her concerns or questions and address every one with patience, understanding, and accurate information. Be genuine, empathetic, and nonjudgmental toward your patient, so he or she will be open and honest with you. This will allow patients to be more relaxed and reassured and be able to get maximal benefit from treatment.

If you follow these lessons, which I learned the hard way, you too can become a better doctor.

I am so grateful that I was able to get such great medical care and that I am alive. I am able to have the joy of hitting every day for a couple of hours. I love tennis so much that I even wrote a song about it. Here is the link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyWJaCtpcX4   (The song starts at 2:05.)

A Tennis Friend
Sean Sloane
sloanecharles7@gmail.com
June 2020

I first met Gene Marsten at a junior tournament in Farmington, Conn, in 1958. He beat me soundly. Our paths then diverged until, 20 years later, we met again at the same tournament, only now we were playing in the 35 division. Some other things had also changed.

I was now the tennis coach at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Gene had played college tennis at Pepperdine, played small pro tournaments all over the world, played guitar and wrote poetry with Guillermo Vilas in Argentina, spent a year at an ashram in India, and changed his name to Jena Marcovicci (to reflect his family roots in Poland). Jena was also in the midst of a year’s vow of silence while living in a tiny cabin overlooking Pontoosuc Lake in Pittsfield, Mass.—no phone, no water, but an outhouse nearby and a bar between two trees where he hung upside down in the morning to clear his head.

We became tennis buddies. Jena would call me from the pay phone in a nearby health food store to arrange practice matches. I quickly learned to do all the talking! I would ask questions and Jena would answer with either a high-pitched whistle (“Yes”) or a low-pitched whistle (“No”). By a process of elimination, we would decide what day and time and where to play next. John Mayotte was working in Pittsfield that summer and was practicing with both of us, but John had no patience for whistling games with Jena. So Jena would call me, we would go through the whistle dance, and then I would call John at work while Jena waited by the pay phone for John’s reply.

That same summer we both played a tournament in Rutland, Vt. No doubt influenced by the proximity of the health food store to his cabin, Jena was a vegetarian. He kept trays of sprouts in the back of his ancient Volkswagen to serve as food on his tennis trips. The tennis courts were up a hill from the club and the club parking lot. We played singles in the morning under a cloudy sky. 

During the warm-up for doubles in the afternoon, the sun broke through. Jena was preparing to serve the first point of our doubles match. He tossed a ball up to check the sun’s position, but then dropped his racket and ran down the hill. Our opponents were confused. “Where is he going?” they asked. Looking down the hill, I could see Jena moving his Volkswagen into shade to protect his sprouts. I explained, and fortunately everyone was understanding about the priorities involved.

Later that summer Jena hitch-hiked north (his car had died) to play in the qualifying event at the Volvo International in North Conway, N.H., where I was the Referee. I knew Jena was coming, so I was not surprised one night when my dinner with Tournament Director Jim Westhall was interrupted by a phone call from the police chief in nearby Jackson, N.H. His men had picked up a bearded character with a guitar and a tennis racket who wouldn’t speak to them but claimed by writing on a chalkboard around his neck that he was a professional tennis player headed for North Conway and the tournament. The police chief apologized for bothering Mr. Westhall but wanted to know if this could possibly be true? Jim looked at me, I nodded, and Jena was sprung from jail.

One day later, Jena played the qualifier, losing badly to Jan Norback, a Swedish player. The Swede happened upon me and Jim later that day and told us how sorry he felt for the guy he had beaten, because he could not speak. I told him that wasn’t correct, that Jena could speak, but chose not to. The Swede looked at us with wide eyes. “Is yoke, yes?” he asked. For many years that phrase was the only correct response for the many unusual occurrences at the Volvo.

Back home in Pittsfield, Jena bought a small plot of land and built an earth house and a clay tennis court where he gave lessons. Every summer James Taylor would come to play at Tanglewood (music festival), but first he and his band would visit Jena’s court for music and tennis and good times.

If you would like to know more about Jena, he has self-published two books on tennis and established a non-profit foundation to fund his Dance of Tennis workshops in the inner cities of Mimi and Los Angeles. He died in 2007 from a heart attack. I was proud to call him a friend.

How to Beat Jimmy Parker
BJ Miller
bjmiller41@gmail.com
June 2020

So, you think you will read this and beat Jimmy? Good luck!

Jimmy’s now won more gold balls than any other man in history, and he’s not stopping. In three years in the 75s, Jimmy has not lost a USTA match. His average number of games lost per set was 1.2 in 2018 and 2020, and 1.3 in 2019, a really bad year for Jimmy. In those three years he lost two sets, one to Fred Drilling, 6-4, in 2018 in Atlanta, and one to Jody Rush, 6-2, in this year’s Grass Courts. Fred and Jody together won a total of two games in the other four sets.

Counting these two matches in which Jimmy lost a set, there have been nine times that someone got at least four games in a set. Drilling and Rush got six and Don Long got six before losing a tiebreak. Bob Quall, Long, and Richard Shipman each got five games in a set. Shipman got four games twice, and Drilling got four games once.

I should mention that Pete O’Brien, a fellow member of the Berkeley Tennis Club, and I played Jimmy on sequential days in the 70s at Mission Hills. Pete did twice as well as I did. The two-day score was Jimmy, 24 games, Berkeley Tennis Club, 3.

The five guys who got at least four games in a set off of Jimmy give us a valuable clue on how to beat him. All five can hit the ball. This should tell us that playing cat and mouse with Jimmy is like playing cat and mouse with a mongoose.

I’ve played him twice. I’ve watched him play. I talked to people who’ve played him. I watched YouTube videos of him. I’ve told many tennis friends to Google “Jimmy Parker Tennis YouTube.” They all say something like, “What the hell is he doing?”

There’s a common sensation playing Jimmy. You think you are in almost all of the points, but you’re not winning many. He rarely hits the ball hard. I thought he never hit it hard until I came in on a really good slice backhand down the line and he ripped a topspin forehand past me. He seems to be hitting shot after effortless shot, just out of comfortable reach. On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, Jimmy is hitting lots of minus 2s.

His balance is wonderful. He makes very few errors and only shows temper when he misses. He’s playing highly controlled, error-free tennis, and you are making lots of errors. He has mastered the art of hitting the least risky, effective shot. For example, you attack the net; Jimmy hits a high, floating ball to a large target over your backhand; you hit a weak ball anywhere on Jimmy’s side of the net; Jimmy hits a little slice into the corner of your forehand service box.

Unspoken “Manly” Rules

Many of us, including me, play tennis to a set of unspoken, “manly” rules. We don’t serve underhanded, we hit over the ball on forehands, we try to hit the ball deep with pace, we hit passing shots with pace, we occasionally hit drop shots but would not build our game around them. In fact, we would not hit drop shots or lobs or moon balls over and over even if they were working. We would hate to be called a “pusher.” In other words, we’ve been watching too much pro tennis on TV.

At some point, Jimmy must have checked the rule book and discovered that the stuff we may be disinclined to do is not prohibited. He must have realistically assessed his own capabilities and ours. And he must have been brutally honest with himself about the fact that senior tennis is largely a game of errors.

Here’s an example: At last year’s 75 Indoors, a friend of mine asked Jimmy why he hit mostly underspin forehands. Surprisingly, Jimmy revealed he does it to better disguise his drop shot.

So, let me get this straight: Here’s a guy who now only occasionally uses his beautiful, flowing, powerful topspin forehand, instead, hitting mostly underspin forehands, to make his drop shot more effective.

He hits underhand serves. He will lob you to death. He hits high, soft, underspin shots deep to your backhand. He stays back on your serve, then comes in on your serve, then drop shots your serve.

Jimmy owns the area of the court inside the service line. Of course, he owns it with drop shots, but he also owns it with slithering underspin shots that most of us never consider. Come to the net against Jimmy and instead of a topspin drive passing shot, you’re likely to get a slice at your feet or wide and low. I don’t know what his practice routine is, but it must include hitting underspin groundstrokes short of the service line.

So, what have we got so far:

• Jimmy is almost always on balance.

• He’s hitting controlled shots, mostly underspin, that tend to put you off balance.

• He uses every shot and hits to every location on the court, locations you may not even consider.

• He is selectively disruptive, especially because of his drop shots. He will drop shot you to death. Don’t forget, he largely switched away from a really good topspin forehand for the sake of his drop shot. If you attack the net, he will lob or hit short, soft angles that stretch you out. If you stand inside the baseline, he can hit high deep balls into the corner.

• He’s not making errors; we are, because we’re constantly under what seems like gentle pressure and out of our “comfort zone.”

• You know that way we like to play? Jimmy won’t let us play that way. Instead, we end up playing Jimmy’s game. And Jimmy’s really good at his game.

Brutal Honesty

Having invoked brutal honesty, I’d have to say I don’t think I will ever beat Jimmy. But maybe one of you can. How to do so may be obvious but hard to execute. Here are some thoughts:

• You always change a losing game, right? Now, we all have losing games against him. So, we have to change our losing game before we walk on the court, months before.

• You can’t let him stay on balance, so you have to stretch him out with pace.

• That means you need a go-to shot, probably a forehand that you can hit hard enough to get him off balance. You probably have to be able to hit it on the rise. You definitely have to make it consistently.

• If you don’t have that shot or if you can’t get in position for it, hit the ball high and deep, topspin lob-type shots, so he can’t hit effective drop shots.

• You need a serve that kicks up or slices a lot. You will need racket head speed and use it for spin rather than speed. You want him to have trouble returning your serve effectively.

• If he is coming in on your serve, you want to be able to hit serves short in the box with lots of slice.

• You are definitely not going to run away with a match against Jimmy, so you’re going to have to play your effective game when things get tight.

• You’re going to be out there for a while—if you play well—so you want to play earlier matches with the intent of getting off the court quickly. Remember, Jimmy is usually fresh when he gets to you, regardless of the round in which you meet.

• If you win a set or come close to winning one, remember what happened to Jody and Fred—one or no games in the next set or two. That means that Jimmy adjusted and/or Jody and Fred were tired, injured, or mentally exhausted. Not being tired or injured requires months of preparation. Avoiding mental exhaustion requires playing long, tough practice matches in which you have to adapt during the match. As for Jimmy’s adjustments, it’s probably a good idea to sit quietly for 45 minutes or so before the match and try to figure out what changes he is likely to make and what you could do in response, so you won’t be surprised and have to figure out how to adjust on the fly. 

I recall hearing results of a study of happiness when retired. The most important factor was having an endeavor. Tennis is a great endeavor. You get exercise, make friends, and can always improve, absolutely or relative to your age.

Beating Jimmy could be viewed as a goal. I think it’s more realistically viewed as an endeavor, a great intellectual and physical puzzle, one requiring honesty about our capabilities, new ways of thinking about something we’ve done for decades, and hard work.

The contest is not only with Jimmy; it’s with ourselves.

A Passion in Life
Shared by Fred Drilling & Dominic Allevato
freddrilling@gmail.com
May 2020

Fred Drilling, who is an NSMTA member as well as a member of the USTPA, sent us this video of his tennis student, Dominic Allevato. Dominic first met Fred at one of the neighborhood clinics four years ago, shortly afterward he began taking one-on-one lessons. Dom recently turned 8 on April 13th. His second grade class was assigned a video project to identify a passion in life, one that could possibly make them a better person. Watch his charming video where he explains his love of the sport and even shares some tips!

Tennis Longevity and the Self
Michael L. Mullan, Ph.D.
mmullan3@swarthmore.edu
May 2020

Dr. Nazarian looked up from the screen, the blurred X-ray images of my right knee in the background, and said, “Mike, it’s bone on bone.” These are words you never want to hear if you are a tennis player, especially a weathered version, a cold medical diagnosis delivered by a sympathetic expert and at the same time a knife plunged into your tennis-playing heart.

Nazarian, a former athlete himself and an accomplished member of the orthopedic team at Philadelphia’s Rothman Institute, went on to suggest not a total but a “partial” replacement for the interior compartment, the medial side, saying at the time, “You’ll be back playing tennis in a month.”

I did get back, but I guarantee it wasn’t a month, and I wondered, later, through the endless weeks of recovery and the toil of rehab, just what kind of tennis my doc was talking about.

I have noticed over the years that the quickest way to stop a conversation among senior tennis players, in fact clear out a whole table of chattering friends and veteran associates of the game, is to bring up the topic of injuries. And so I begin this essay with a certain reluctance knowing that the mere mention of body vulnerability in our aged cohort tends to deafen the ear, close avenues of communication normally accessible and, eventually, induce silence. My path from partial knee replacement through rehab and back to the court was, naturally, tortuous, especially in the early stages, but in the end, it also was a journey of understanding and renewal, maybe even triumph.

The story of injury and recovery is a common saga among readers of these words, a drama of ordinary dimensions all of us naturally dread but eventually experience. The interesting segment of my experience was not the progressive march forward to strength, flexibility, and movement, all normal aspects of sport injury recovery, but the abnormal, unanticipated response posing questions on the nature of the personality, a window into the structure of the self, an answer discovered in the abstract realm of sociological theory.

Prior to surgery, my tennis was casual, playing as many senior tournaments as I could, fitting them in between commitments to work and family, my ranking rising some only to tumble when life intervened. With the surgery and its corporal insult, the urge to hit, move, and compete became not a pastime but a determined quest, an unanticipated fresh will to action.

Why does tennis, denied, suddenly become so meaningful and necessary? Why do we aging tennis players fight so hard to get back?

Sociological Insights and the Self

Let me turn to sociological theory and practice to suggest an answer, the works of Irving Goffman an intriguing guide to understanding the injured of this world. Goffman is a symbolic interactionist, that is, he perceives the social world as a system of integrated signs and markers to guide and direct everyday, ordinary behavior, symbols, rituals, and customs encoded and acted upon to provide order and continuity, safety and comfort. He is considered to be a micro-sociologist, focusing first on the individual and the small behaviors of daily existence, a method that eventually leads to an exposure of our larger society and its various systems.

Sociology, to many, is a social science validated by empirical studies, and here Goffman doesn’t always fit, his explorations of people and their habits, explanations so creatively presented in a literary style you feel you are in the hands of a novelist. The brilliance of his subtle observations of everyday life make him ideal for an exploration of motivational impulses of veteran tennis players.

Goffman suggests that the social practices that provide cohesion are deeply imbedded as moral guides, so invisible that we don’t notice them, don’t recognize the very social facts that make us human. However, when the codes of behavior break, disassemble, we do notice the void of direction and grounding in our lives, and the previously hidden, subterranean components of a social order are revealed, a contention Goffman explored in Asylums, a work devoted to exposing the underworld of the injured in “total institutions.”

The incapacitated veteran tennis player enters a place of the mind and heart similar to the pathology of the total institution, an imaginary prison made all the more desperate by the sense that our time on the courts is already limited. I think all of us feel somewhat lost when dependable institutional supports disappear—Wimbledon cancelled, for example—and even though we seniors were not going to actually play on the sacred grass, its loss temporarily shatters the hold these cultural icons, symbols of reassurance, have on our sense of place and security.

Yet it is more than the simple withdrawal of rules and norms that is the source of destabilization. Goffman wrote, “Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet commitment and attachment to any social unit implies a kind of selflessness.” We are all citizens of something larger than ourselves, but we create meaning and identity in minor acts of resistance to these concrete structures.

Goffman immersed himself in a mental hospital for a year, a participant observer studying the social processes of confinement and its effects on inmates; he suggests that his findings might apply to other forms of supervised control and restraint—prisons, internment camps, prison camps, boarding schools. He argued that the inmate goes through a process of “mortification” adjusting to the new environment and responds through a series of “primary adjustments” to the formal control of the institution, mainly complying with regulations.

Secondary Adjustments

But it is what Goffman termed the “secondary adjustments” that yield the most significant and interesting findings: the way people come to avoid required behaviors of total institutions, work around rules, create backchannel networks, ignore codes of conformity to develop an underworld in opposition to institutional expectations. It is not the well-intentioned plans and programs of reformers that define the situation but the very opposition to an idealism of reform, the individual resisting in adaptive ways the program of rehabilitation designed by administrators. Buried in these acts of rebellion lies a truth about individual identity.

The orthopedic system prescribes an initial analysis by the trained medical expert, a series of diagnostic tests, often a dose of physical therapy and, when necessary, surgery by the practiced expert of the sub-field. The next step is a program of exercises monitored by a trained therapist, a progressive, consecutive, reasoned approach backed by experimental data from an ocean of previous subjects, monitored and tested.

And yet, again, it is the patient’s personal adjustments, the underlife of the prescribed program, and the resistance to an identity that defy a state of morbidity, that mobilize the road to recovery. The veteran athlete—ever sensitive to a message of limited time—pushes aside prescribed limits, tests the restraints of reasoned procedures, friendly advice, spousal caution, to regain and recast a past, a former self in compliance with, but also in resistance to, institutional control and expectation. Without this adjustment, this rediscovered intensity of character, partially self-destructive, and grounded in a vision of a past in conflict with a present, a real return is not possible.

And so it was and is for me; reason and science and analysis welcomed accomplices in the quest for renewal but not really in control, pain naturally the unwelcomed co-conspirator, the self and its spirit making its own rules.

I returned to Dr. Nazarian for my much-anticipated, six-month check-up, fresh X-rays in the offing and a few questions of my own. Dr. Nazarian noticed the return of strength and muscle girth, a complete flexibility of joint and leg, surface scarring minimal, and he seemed pleased. But I wanted more. “Doc, I’m moving pretty well these days, but why does it still hurt so much with squats and certain movements?” Nazarian finished with his notes, took off his glasses, and glanced at me with a look that belied the weight of his life-restoring profession and said, “Hey, Mike. I gave you a new knee. Now start using it!”

And so I have and will continue, Nazarian’s honest, unrehearsed words, now a cherished motto, a ringing reminder needed on certain days of lingering pain and stiffness and the sheer fatigue of rediscovering the tennis-playing self. We all live bound by institutions and formal rules, backed by codes inherited and imprinted by culture settings, but we construct and then reconstruct our sense of self through resistance.

As Goffman stated, “Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wider social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull.”

1. Irving Goffman, Asylums, 1961, 302.

2. I was fortunate from day one to have encountered Justin Jiunta, a committed and innovative physical therapist of NovaCare, Fishtown office, Philadelphia. Justin volunteered me for more pain than I thought I could handle, always directing me back to the court; Justin, not really much of a tennis player himself, is a guiding inspiration to so many of us in need of repair. Irving Goffman, Asylums, 1961, 302.

Start A Tradition…
Mark Winters
okram@earthlink.net
December 2019

During the holiday season there are times when one more “something” comes in handy. The solution for a conundrum of this sort can vary. While one idea may work in a particular instance, it might be off the mark in another.

For this reason, here are some “outside of the box” ways to show appreciation during this special time of year.

Donating to a program in an individual’s name could be more than just an answer to a quandary that might arise. There could be a club that needs help, or maybe a school tennis team that needs support.

Public park tennis is often a “forgotten” entry within a city budget. Court maintenance is always an issue as is the ability to offer low-cost introductory lessons. Both always appreciate financial assistance.

The National Junior Tennis and Learning Program (NJTL) and Junior Team Tennis (JTT) always need support. Contributions enable the programs to provide the essentials for the game’s development. They should not be overlooked .

Providing an introduction to the game for deserving youngsters can open doors to a whole new world for them. It also insures that the next generation will have the tools to carry on the tradition of tennis being the game of a lifetime.

Is This A New Plateau?
Bill Finger
bfinger3@gmail.com
November 2019

At the 2019 Southern Senior Men’s Clay Court Open Championships, which took place May 1-5 at the River Hills Club in Jackson, Mississippi, I hoped to draw Bill Hester. Maybe I would have a shot at redemption for so many stinging defeats more than 50 years ago in this very city, where we both grew up. Only once, in the final of the district high school tournament, did I take a set at 7-5. But he rolled through the next two, skunking me in the third. I hadn’t seen him since my family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, after my junior year of high school, in 1964.

On the Men’s 70 singles draw sheet, my name did not land next to Hester’s. Instead, in the first round, I faced the No. 1 seed, Padj Bolton. Georgia Springer, my wife, offered her usual upbeat observation to the news: “Well, you wanted to see where you stand with the best players, right?”

Thursday, May 2, 3:30, I took the court. Even after a 30-year absence from tournament tennis, I retained the instincts from my self-taught years on Jackson’s public courts, then honed on the Duke University team (pre-scholarship era). Now, with the wisdom of old age and a few recent tournaments under my belt, I had three goals: keep the ball in play, don’t overhit, aim for my shots.

I won the toss and chose to receive. He double faulted twice, and I kept the ball in play. First game for the underdog. At 2-2, Bolton hit his 6 feet, 2 inch stride. His forehand began to overpower me; I hit late, weak backhands, setting up his winners. His serve picked up pace, winning more and more “free points” – either outright or on the “serve plus one” second shot, as announcers like to say these days. Of course, no one was calling this first round match in Jackson, even though the USTA did rank it as “Category II,” one category below the four national championships held for seniors on different surfaces.

Behind 1-0 in the second set, I realized that his forehand and serve were hurting me the most. I started to hit to his backhand whenever possible. I held serve, picking on his backhand. Then, on his serve, I backed up two feet behind the baseline and got better returns in play. He held, but with a struggle.

I held again, leveling the second set at 2-2. But he adjusted too. Too often, I hit a decent forehand up the line to his backhand, but he saw it coming and ran around it to blast an inside out forehand. I had too much court to cover to reach my backhand corner. I had several ads to pick up more games but went down to the top seed, 6-2, 6-2. Adjust earlier, stay confident, vary my shot selection. I would get closer.

The next morning, on Friday, the winners played in the quarters: Bolton vs. Hester – Hester got only one game. The two first-round losers in our section of the draw met in the consolation bracket. Hester had beaten Steve Duffel 6-2, 6-4; I played Duffel and won by the same score. For a head-to-head match-up with Hester, for now, I based my comparison on winning three more games against Bolton than he did.

Doubles – Another Shot

First round of doubles, Finger and John Walton, the best 70s player in North Carolina, against Hester and Hugh Burris from Texas. A big lefty, Burris played the deuce court, putting a wall of forehand volleys against any shots we would hit down the middle. Hester, slower than in his best days, had less court to cover in doubles but still had his lifelong shot-making ability.

In the first set, Burris was a beast, poaching my returns of Hester’s tough serves and hitting great angles on his serve returns. Hester too hit clean, solid shots. John and I had never played doubles together, but we had a stoic determination. I got my serve in, returned well. John did the same. But one break of my serve was enough to go down a set, 6-4. The second set started just as tight. One game I double faulted the first two points but kept my composure and rallied to hold.

As the set moved closer to the finish line, my serve came up. At 15-love, serving to Hester in the ad court, I put my toss a bit more to my left, about 11 o’clock instead of 12. I snapped my wrist perfectly at the height of my reach and hit a wicked kick serve deep in the backhand corner. Hester barely reached for it as it whizzed by. Later in the game, another ace in the same corner. I held. We leveled the set at 6 all.

John served first in the seven-point tiebreak and double faulted. But we got the “mini-break” back, down only 1-2, back on serve. We got the first point on my serve, back to 2-2, but then I also double faulted. Again, down another mini-break as they served at 3-2. I focused on keeping my eye on the ball and closing at the net to try to hit a winner. Hester got one of his two service points, but that was their last. We took the tiebreak, 7-4.

We all sat and rested, two courts down from the clubhouse. I saw Carol Ann Vest, nearly 80 and still playing tennis, talking with Hester’s wife. Carol Ann is the oldest child of Dorothy Vest, who ran the Jackson public tennis center where Bill and I grew up. The Vests were the 1979 USTA Family of the Year. Bill’s father, Slew, had envisioned and built the River Hills Club, on the edge of Jackson, in 1964, before going on to lead the USTA and move the U.S. Open from the Westside Tennis Club in Forest Hills to, what is now, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.

Down 2-4 in the third set, Bill may have felt the pressure of family as he stepped up to serve. He served well. John and I returned solid balls, but Burris reached his long arm out into the middle of the court to hit winning volleys. Hester got them to their first ad point. I bounced at the baseline, ready for a serve to my backhand. When it came, I moved forward, turned my hips, and planted my right foot to slice a low return. At the last second, I sensed Burris was moving to mid court to cut off my return. I adjusted. Clean winner down his alley. Deuce.

Hester held again on the deuce court against Walton. Their second ad. This time, as Hester’s toss went up, I took a step to my left and was able to hit a forehand drive toward Hester’s backhand. Not only did I sail it past the reaching Burris, it landed deep in the alley. Hester never touched it. Deuce.

Again, despite a very good return from Walton, our opponents worked themselves into a third straight ad point. As Hester served, I stepped left and got the forehand swing I wanted. My sharp, low dipping shot past Burris fell right at Hester’s feet. Deuce.

This time, John hit a winner on his return, and we had our first ad. I got ready for another winning forehand but dumped an easy serve in the net. John had said very little the entire match, but this time offered a boost: “Give him a chance to hit it.” I could feel his energy rising, and he got us another ad with a great return. This time, I hit another sharp forehand at Bill’s feet. Our game. I served at 5-2, got my serves in, and John pounced on every ball. Our match: 4-6, 7-6, 6-2.

“Your serve was the difference,” Hester said, as we walked toward the clubhouse, where the fans had been watching the match since the tiebreak. “I was returning well and then you got those aces on me. I think we would’ve had it without those aces.”

Hot water poured over my head in the plush locker room at the main club house. My mind wandered as I let the victory soak in: Does beating my childhood nemesis mean I stepped onto a new plateau as a tennis player? Don’t childhood patterns affect adult thinking? Or do I need to beat someone like Bolton? Or do I just need to get better and not worry about winning? Isn’t that the main lesson, to control what I can, my own shots, win or lose?

Maybe I reached my full potential for that day, at least in my return to competitive tennis after a long absence. I decided not to worry about the greater questions nibbling at my mind. As I left the club that evening, I smiled, content with a very good win.

 Editor’s Note: After some local success in the Men’s 35 division in the 1980s, Bill Finger quit competitive tennis. At the age of 71, he returned, first in USTA League competition and then in tournaments. In 2018 and 2019, he played in three national Men’s 70 events, compiling a 3-6 record (main draw and consolation). He has been a Raleigh, North Carolina resident since 1977.

Nehemiah Atkinson - No One Like Him…
Billy Crawford
billyecrawford@gmail.com
August 2019

Nehemiah Atkinson’s crowning achievements on the tennis court took place in 1999. After years of finishing near the top in national age division play, Atkinson eventually benefited from his perseverance in high-level competition. The National Men’s 80 Hard Court singles title he claimed in San Diego, California was his most important victory. In doubles, he triumphed with Florida legend, Gardnar Mulloy for the National Men’s 80 Grass Court championship. Teaming with William Kuntz, he added the National Men’s 80 Clay Court doubles trophy to his collection. He made ’99 a career best year when he and Mulloy, (the Men’s 80 singles winner), defeated a Spanish team in the doubles final of the ITF Senior World Championships in Barcelona, Spain. (Atkinson was also a member of the US Men’s 80 Mulloy Cup that year as he was in 2000.)

Looking back, Atkinson said, “I’ve had a lot of fun playing senior tennis tournaments. I’ve met some of the best tennis players in the world, such as Bitsy Grant, Bobby Riggs and Gardnar Mulloy. It has been a thrill to play with them. I’ve got better wheels than most people I play. Also, I play a lot of young folks and I’m simply out on the court a lot. Tennis keeps you young. It stimulates your heart, keeps your body in shape and your eyes sharp.”

When asked if he had any advice for senior players, Atkinson, who participated in international tournaments in Australia and South Africa, in addition to Spain, pointed out, “It’s important to remember that tennis is played with the mind. You need to be patient and learn from your matches in order to continue to improve.”

Ironically, Atkinson, who was the son of a preacher, made it to the top of senior tennis without ever having a lesson. As he philosophically stated, “God blessed me with everything I needed. It’s a hard road to travel in, achieving success, but anyone can do it with hard work, dedication and the will to win.”

Born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1918, his family moved to New Orleans in his youth when his father was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of the Holiness Church. He attended Thomy Lafon and J. W. Hoffman schools in New Orleans, and the Louisiana Industrial Training School in Farmerville.

Atkinson first hit a tennis ball as a nine-year-old. As an African-American youngster in New Orleans, he was attracted to the game, which was largely confined to the ranks of the elite. He soon realized that tennis was a white man’s game. But, he didn’t believe in racial barriers and he was determined to not let it interfere with his or any other African-Americans enjoyment of the sport. What resulted was a lifetime of encouraging minorities to learn tennis and expand their cultural exposure.

When World War II began, he enlisted in the Army at Jacksonville Army Airfield in October of 1941. After completing basic training, he was assigned to the 97th Regiment, the Army’s Black Corp of Engineers, which was delegated to help build the Alcan Highway. After the Pearl Harbor bombing on December 7, 1941, the United States military was worried about an attack on the West Coast and/or Alaska.

Because of the concern, the military decided that a better road between the remote territory and the lower 48 states was essential, and the Alcan Highway (Alaska-Canada) was the solution. Eleven thousand soldiers, including 4,000 from the 97th bulldozed their way into engineering history. Stretching 1,500 miles from British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska, the Alcan traverses incredibly difficult and hostile territory, as it crosses the Canadian Rockies, raging rivers and dense forest. Remarkably, the highway was built in just eight months.

After his stint in the Army, Atkinson returned to New Orleans. He studied offset printing, worked a night job as a supervisor at the Coca-Cola plant and gave private tennis lessons during the day. He taught an untold numbers of youngsters from different ethnic backgrounds during that time. He spent nearly 23 years as a tennis instructor and Supervisor for the New Orleans Recreation Department, (officially he was Director of Tennis), before retiring in 1995.

Of his career, he said, “I believe in giving back to the community.”

Lloyd Dillon, a New Orleans tennis professional reminisced, “I can remember when he visited my high school in 1954. He played a classmate of mine who was also a good tennis player. He impressed me by the way he moved around on the basketball blacktop court converted to a tennis court for that event. He looked like he was gliding on air. Mr. A. ran tennis programs and used old wood racquets for (participating) kids each summer. He taught basic tennis strokes – forehand, backhand, and serve; as well as the rules of the game. He had a way that made you love tennis, even if you didn’t have any experience with the game. There were not tennis courts available for Blacks at that time, in our neighborhood, so, Mr. A would use volleyball nets in parking lots or any place with space close by. Mr. A gave trophies to all participants.”

In the early 1990s, Atkinson quietly made an impact. He became the first African-American member of the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club. In 1993, he was the USPTR Player of the Year. Later, the organization (USPTR) established the Nehemiah Atkinson Humanitarian Grant which is presented to an individual who makes a commitment to improving the lives of others. In addition, he received the inaugural Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award and the T.N. Touchstone, Jr. Memorial Trophy, which is given to a senior player who displays outstanding sportsmanship and support of Southern tennis.

Deservedly, he became a member of the Louisiana Tennis Hall of Fame in 1986.
He was inducted into the Southern Hall of Fame in 1997 after having won 15 (Southern) section titles and captained the Men’s 75 team in USTA national competition. In 2000, his name was added to the collection of special individuals who are members of the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.

Atkinson Stern Tennis Center is one of the oldest tennis venues in the US. Opened in 1897, it was originally the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club. The club later moved to its present location on Jefferson Avenue. In 1973, the City of New Orleans acquired the old facility and renamed it the Stern Center in honor of Edgar Stern and his wife Edith Rosenwald Stern, the daughter of Sears, Roebuck & Co magnate Julius Rosenwald. Those philanthropists contributed financially to the center. In time, the location where Atkinson was the Manager and Head Professional for two decades, changed its named to honor him.

Nehemiah Atkinson, a longtime volunteer with the American Tennis Association, who gave so much to New Orleans and to tennis, passed away on February 9, 2003 at the age of 84.

Indeed, there was “No One Like Him…”

Ah, Arthur is Here
David Linebarger
linebarg14@gmail.com
August 2019
This article was originally published in Another Chicago Magazine

Arthur Ashe
Solve this problem: Your daughter’s playing with a doll, a gift she just received from a friend. The doll is white. 1968: John Carlos gives the black power salute Arthur Ashe wins the first US Open. 1970: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye the problem of “whiteness” as a standard of beauty Arthur Ashe wins The Australian Open. 1972: Bettye Saar The Liberation of Aunt Jemima 1975 the liberation continues Arthur Ashe outthinks Connors to win Wimbledon “no matter what I do, or where or when I do it, I feel the eyes of others watching me, judging me.” Arthur avoids tennis clubs where he is not allowed, skips tournaments he cannot enter, turning and turning as contemplative as inward as Rembrandt (his favorite artist). In Rembrandt’s “Aristotle with a Bust of Homer,” Ashe sees the “close kinship between admiration and envy” he must feel when contemplating John Carlos or Muhammad Ali—black athletes who could protest in ways Ashe’s personality and patriotism would not allow. Ashe always soft-spoken and behind the scenes: “The problem with you, Arthur, is that you are not arrogant enough” (Jesse Jackson). White racists told Ashe how to live. Black activists told Ashe how to live. Should he take the white doll away from his daughter during a nationally televised benefit for the Arthur Ashe Foundation of AIDS the year before his death? Nelson Mandela in prison reads A Hard Road to Glory, Ashe’s three-volume history of the black athlete. Ashe cannot abide any sacrifice of dignity, any sacrifice of morality, the question always always how can a black person live a life of freedom and dignity. In his thoughtful excursions to South Africa to play tennis, Ashe did as much as anyone to challenge the system of apartheid. When Mandela toured America, he smiled when someone whispered in his ear: “Ah, Arthur is here.”✶

Billie Jean King
Parable of the Three Doors
The first door’s locked. Deadbolts everywhere, a not yet discernible voice inside. I couldn’t get a closet deep enough. I’ve got a homophobic family, a tour that will die if I come out, the world is homophobic and, yeah, I was homophobic. The second door’s a ceiling. The Houston Astrodome, the stars. Come call it Title IX. King still wakes up nervous, then realizes she won. “I thought it would set us back fifty years if I did not win that match.” An athletic and creative strategist who knew the value of taking risks—her aggressive serve and volley style had won her 11 grand slams–King decided the day of the match to slowball Riggs, run him as much as possible. DON’T DO THAT! THAT’S CRAZY! Riggs jumps over the net, shakes her hand: “I really underestimated you.” The third door is opening, open. The third door is closing, closed. You try to open it. Someone else tries to open it. Before the law stands a doorkeeper. She shakes your hand: “Hi, I’m Billie Jean King.” Who is it speaks next? What do they say? How can we open more doors?

Brad Parks
1976 flying spinning sky snow skies freestyle freedom beards hair accidents not Vietnam not draft not WWI nationalism amputees dreams phantom limbs flying spinning sky hospital free time paralysis free time mind wonder if wheelchair wonder if fly and soar not this not that wonder if you can play wheelchair tennis everywhere obstacles every damn curb every damn bathroom hit the road Brad promote dream teach amputees kids vets on the road Brad barnstorming parking lots gyms the two bounce rule the custom wheelchair teach amputees kids vets every able-bodied tennis pro in every town no one pities an athlete competing in grand slam finals I remember the 70s the 80s I felt pity I felt sorry when I looked in a wheelchair’s eyes not sorry never sorry for any opponent who wants to kick your ass in more than 80 countries around the world and at every grand slam two people roll up shake hands at the net.

Andre Agassi
At dawn I sighed to see my hairs fall;
At dusk I sighed to see my hairs fall . . .
Did Agassi lose his first French Open final because he was worried his wig would fall off? “Image Is Everything.” Vegas, entertainment, the flashy shot. When the going got tough, his beautiful zen-like-deer-in-the-headlight eyes. How to explain those eyes and hands, his return of serve? Childhood’s father boxer creates dragon monster: a souped-up ball machine spitting fast balls, curves. Hit or be hit. Children must defend themselves. Timing can be learned. Slay the father by becoming the father. Tennis as boxing. Ground strokes as body blows. Train. Train. Meditate. Train. Run hills in the heat, bench 300 pounds. Serve wide to the forehand. Kick it out wide to the backhand. The next shot in the opposite corner. Corner to corner. Take out the legs, the head will go. Oldest male player to be #1. Punk. Monk. Bodhissatva.
Now I know why the priest who seeks repose frees his heart by first shaving his head.
–Bo Zuhyi, “On His Baldness”

Yannick Noah/Amelie Mauresmo
Miscegenation. I first read that word in a Faulkner novel. Métisse (mixed race). I first heard that word in one of Noah’s hit songs. Half man whispered in the women’s locker room. A mere decade later, a muscular body such as Mauresmo’s was accepted by everyone, desired by many. Truth was she played like a male ballet dancer: a Stefan Edberg, a Rudolf Nureyev, a Suzanne Lenglen, the last French woman to win Wimbledon in 1925 before Mauresmo won it in 2006. Only then could Mauresmo jokingly confess: “I don’t want anyone to talk about my nerves anymore,” the nerves that too often wreaked havoc with her beautiful free-flowing all-court game. Maybe she could have learned from Suzanne Lenglen, the ballerina goddess from the flapper 1920s who hit like a man and flouted the conventions, sipping brandy on changeovers to calm her nerves. Maybe a lesson from Yannick Noah, who admitted to toking up before matches. What’s your biggest weapon, Yannick? My hair, my dreadlocks. Noah’s tennis seemed carefree, reggae, creative: a spontaneous all-court game with acrobatic play at the net. When he became the only French citizen to win the French Open in the open era, he sparked one of the biggest parties in France since the French Revolution. Three French (S)heroes head into a bar: Androgyne, flapper, two-spirit, three-spirit, four-spirit, five . . . Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our mind.

Evonne Goolagong
Wiradjuri Cummeragunga Yota Yota Goolagong The Dreaming rock art walkabout Goolagong “a feathery style” ( Chris Evert) not serve and volley but “Serve and Saunter” (Martina Navratilova) Goolagong moved so gracefully distracted opponents would watch Goolagong “our first aborigine to become champion” Goolagong first racquet the side of a fruit crate Goolagong etched in the dirt the number of times she hit the ball Goolagong we should not romanticize the most graceful mover and poetic athlete in tennis history Goolagong history warns us not to romanticize the indigenous the aboriginal Goolagong Quinka Massacres assimilation immigration destruction Goolagong dreaming “white man’s bullets ripping through the flesh of my ancestors” Goolagong means “tall trees near still water” Wiradjuri word “gulagallang” means something like “a big mob” Goolagong walkabout a loss of concentration that’s what the commentators said Goolagong walkabout “a nomadic tradition, a cleansing of the spirit by moving to another place for a time” after many years Goolagong: “I believe the way I played the game reflected a calmness, a serenity of spirit which I now equate with being Aboriginal.”

Li Na
“If I were teaching a pig, it would have learned by now.” Backhands, forehands, scars . . . The Chinese say: “A strict teacher makes for an excellent student.” In the rigid Chinese sports system, no one asked if she wanted to play tennis. Train and train, internalize the joyless, harsh voice within. A bit older, some success: “If I have no freedom, I am going to quit.” Danfei, flying solo. After winning grand slam championships, she does not thank China. To the youth who adore her, she is Big Sister Na. A personality, a presence, not a communist tool for the greater good. She makes fun of her husband’s snoring, his weight, his luck in finding a wealthy woman like her. In China Daily, the mouth of the Chinese party: Li Na’s “insolence” goes against “social customs and traditions.” As the most marketable athlete in China’s history, more people watched her win the French Open than watched the Super Bowl. Andre Agassi her favorite player: long hair, freedom, earring, rebel. The Chinese middle class booms. Millions more play tennis, the most individual of sports. A rose tattoo’s hidden on Li Na’s chest. Who does not want to rebel?

✶much of the material from the first segment is from Ashe’s Days of Grace.

A Tournament With Special Meaning
Mark Winters
mwinters@nsmta.net
July 2019

Many of those in the senior ranks remember the pre-Social Media days when people went about exchanging thoughts by letter, phone calls or e-mail. Those times are long-gone. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and a number of other platforms have become the “go-to” ways of communicating.

The pluses and minuses of these advances are perceived in a variety of ways by each individual. This observation is not surprising because in reality, the world goes around and around, and is supported by “Individual Differences”.

In my mind, there is a good deal more to the Social Media issue. It affects me deeply even though I have shunned using them myself. One of the reasons for my resistance hinges on Alex Kuhn and outcomes that play out due to social media bullying.

My feelings were rekindled when I received an email from Mark Kuhn, a dear friend. He wanted to meet with me because he was at The Championships (Wimbledon). Several years ago, our paths had crossed, after I read a story about the All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club he had built on his farm.

My curiosity was spurred by a desire to discover “why in the world” an individual (and his wife, Denise) would want to build a grass tennis court on their 800-acre family farm. It was seemingly in the middle of nowhere. (Actually, it is 30 miles southeast of Mason City, Iowa.)

As it turned out, Kuhn, who is in his 60s, was introduced to the game listening to a 1960 BBC Wimbledon broadcast by the tennis legend, Jack Kramer, on his grandfather’s short-wave radio. No pun intended – a seed was planted. Years later, it took root when he decided to turn a cattle feedlot into a grass tennis court.

He began construction of the court in 2002. He had truckloads of sandy soil brought to his property in order to support the growth of grass court seed. Then, along with his sons, Alex and Mason, and a collection of friends, he began the process of turning a plot of land, (which is in Charles City, Iowa), into a grass tennis court. It opened in 2003 and has the ambiance of Wimbledon. (The setting, as he told me, includes a white picket fence and a green and purple color scheme. He made it, “Wimbledon in the Midwest” so people can experience what it is like to be at The Championships.)

In one of our early e-mail exchanges Kuhn explained, “I interned at the All England Lawn Tennis Club for eight glorious days prior to the 2012 Championships. I wrote a blog for the USTA about the experience and it may still be available online. The blog was turned into a book. You can go to blurb.com and look up my name and read about it in the preview section. The title is ‘Never Forget Your Dreams’.”

He continued, “I was there the year of the Olympics and learned how the ground-staff pre-germinated the seed, soaked the court with water, then hand sowed it immediately after The Championships to get the court into condition prior to the start of the Olympic Tennis Championships.”

He returned to the AELTC in 2015 with his son, Alex, who was actively involved in the maintenance of the court at home. They were anxious to learn more about the complexity of tending a grass court. (Following the trip, Mark Kuhn wrote “Wimbledon 2015: Dreams Fulfilled & Mission Accomplished”, a book about their adventure.)

He made another visit to SW19 in 2016 and went home buoyed by the additional grass court upkeep information he had gleaned. Sadly, very soon thereafter, his and Denise’s lives changed unexpectedly and dramatically.

Alex Kuhn, who had been elected to the Mason City Council in 2011, opposed the construction of a $240 million pork-processing facility in the area. His general concerns about the new development and its effect on the community grew as the company responsible for the construction continually altered the promises that were made in order to gain support. Big business wanted to ensure the deal would be consummated. For being true to his beliefs, he was hounded unmercifully. Some believed his vote against the project would be the reason that the area’s economy and employment would not enjoy a financial windfall. Bated and besieged, he was finally completely overwhelmed by the situation. On July 15th, the 34-year-old took his life.

Grieving is very personal. This is the reason, the Kuhns decided to remember their son in a very unique way. They initiated the Alex J. Kuhn Invitational, a Junior Team Tennis challenge event involving 12 & nder boys’ and girls’ teams from Iowa and Minnesota. The annual tournament is held on the Alex J. Kuhn Court of Dreams.

Every year in July, my thoughts turn to Mark and Denise Kuhn and how they dealt with a tragedy. I also think about Social Media bullying and how it is not confined solely to “youngster’s.” It can rear its ugly head almost any time and anywhere.

In the aftermath of his son’s passing, Mark Kuhn regularly stresses the importance of mental health care for everyone, no matter their age. He has admitted, “Losing Alex is a heartache that will never mend, but seeing kids playing tennis on his grass court keeps Alex's legacy of civility and integrity alive in our hearts."

Courtesy and respect are some of the building blocks that make the game and this particular tournament very special. That will again be the case when the 3rd Annual Alex J. Kuhn Invitational takes place July 19-20 at the All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club.

My Teammate - Dick Johnson
Armistead Neely
apendergrass@earthlink.net
June 2019

In 2012 I was the captain of the United States Britannia Cup Team in the International Tennis Federation’s World Team Championships. The team represented the best that the United States had to offer for over sixty-five-year-old male tennis players. It included Brian Cheney (winner of over sixty- plus national titles), Jimmy Parker (winner of over 100 national titles), me (winner of a paltry thirty-plus national titles) and Dick Johnson (winner of over forty national titles).

We were competing in the World Team Championships played in Umag, Croatia. Umag is a seaside resort community with a history of hosting international tennis championships on its many red-clay courts in their quaint environs. On the final day of the competition, we played the team representing Spain. Jorge Camina Borda (many times an ITF. World singles champion) led their team, along with Jairo Velasco Sr., a former top 50 ranked ATP professional singles player. The third team member was Luis Flor de la Morena, another gifted player. They were a formidable force and favored to sweep the competition in our division.

In the morning play, Camina won the number one singles contest against big-hitting Brian Cheney, but I was able to even the match defeating their number two player, Flor de la Morena. So, it came down to the third and final match, the doubles against Camina and Velasco, to decide who was the “World’s Best” over-65 men’s team.

The match presented a big problem. Camina and Velasco hardly ever lost a doubles contest. They were surgical in their approach, quick around the court, made precious few errors and played marvelous defensive tennis. Jairo, whose experience gained from his days as an ATP touring professional, knew how to carve people up on a doubles court and Jorge played a very solid add-court doubles game having won multiple senior doubles titles.

As captain, after the singles matches, I called a team meeting to discuss our options. All four members had numerous national doubles titles. Brian and I, and Dick and Jimmy, had played together successfully on countless occasions. I asked for suggestions for our final team paring. Each team member made a case for another team member to take us to victory. Everyone spoke about being ready to play but deferred to the abilities of their teammates to get the job done. What a great group of champions. I was very proud of their selfless promotion of their teammates and their readiness to do whatever was in the team’s best interest. I know some players who would not promote their teammates because of their own self-interest.

No consensus could be reached about the best paring, so the decision became mine to make. I knew the Spanish players well and knew their playing patterns. I knew they would depend heavily on their defensive skills and play attacking tennis only after probing their opponents with delicate shots and plenty of lobs. So, in my opinion, consistency, powershot-making, great reach and court coverage, and most of all great over-heads were the keys to our chances for success.

Because of these needed skills, I chose Brian Cheney and Dick Johnson. At first, Dick strongly suggested that I should play with Brian. Jimmy supported whatever decision I made. I felt Dick’s silky-smooth reliability off the ground and his six-foot three-inch frame were better suited to foil the Spanish doubles strategy. I also knew that Brian’s serve (in my opinion, the best in super-senior tennis) and his superior overhead (on a six-foot two-inch body) would be pivotal to our success.

Dick reluctantly agreed to help “carry the flag” in this last contest for the world title. Then, he became a little quiet, even a little more quiet than normal. You could tell that he was steeling himself for the battle ahead. He knew that he would have to use all his copious athletic skills and guile to out-perform his Spanish opponents. Dick also knew that the Spanish would favor trying to dismantle his confidence rather than go after the more powerful hitting Cheney.

As Brian and Dick approached the center court to play the featured match, the Spanish team suddenly realized that their job just got more complicated, playing two tall, lean, skilled, scrappy and determined opponents. The match began with much anticipation and a solid crowd courtside. Boisterous support was provided by Liz Johnson (Dick’s wife), Anne Cheney (Brian’s wife), Alice Pendergrast (my wife), along with Linda Nash (David’s wife - David had just flown in for the Individual World Championship competition) and a number of other US supporters. Jimmy and I acted as coaches on the changeovers, utilizing our one hundred years plus of competitive experience in an effort to pull out a victory.

The match developed as we expected. Our guys played smart tennis, taking advantage of errant shots and giving their own shots plenty of margin for error. Sure enough, the Spanish players immediately began a progression of lobs and probing dink angle shots. By our count in the first set alone the U.S. team hit over ninety overheads. But the lobs were met with power-shot statement “put-aways” by both Dick and Brian. Dick, who was constantly being probed by the Spanish opponents, played flawlessly. It was truly a beautiful tennis match to watch, played well by both teams.

The first set was pretty even until the later stages when the Spanish team broke through and won it, six games to two. The level of play was very high with most points being finished with out-right winners, not errors. The second set swung our way as Dick and Brian dominated play in spite of the exceptional Spanish defensive tactics, six games to three.

Jimmy and I, along with the American contingent of fans were a little worn-out after watching the first two sets of this great match. But Dick and Brian looked fresh and ready for the deciding set. Jimmy and I advised them not to fall into the trap of playing “safe” tennis in the third set, but to go for it when their comfort level was high on a particular shot. The battle continued with Brian pounding overheads and Dick maneuvering the ball into the corners with his volleys. The level of play in the third set did not drop. It actually rose to a higher level. The Spanish defensive shots were more well-placed, while the responses to them were even more penetrating.

At four games-all in the third set, we broke serve with powerful shots and brave risk-taking tactics. Now, if we could only serve it out. Again, with Brian serving for the match at five games to four, Jimmy and I told Dick and Brian to just play high percentage tennis and take risks when they felt comfortable. But the Spanish team was not ready to concede the match. Jairo hit a “circus-shot” lob winner that caught the baseline to bring the score to fifteen-forty and then Camina reached into his sophomoric bag of tricks and stood in the service box on Brian’s serve to Jairo, distracting Brian into a double-fault.

We were suddenly even after a couple of hours of play. As Camina began his service game at five games all, our guys were fired-up. Dick and Brian quickly broke Camina’s serve to put Dick in a position to serve the match out at six games to five. We were nervous and excited about this turn-about. But we didn’t need to worry about the outcome with these two grizzled veterans of countless tennis battles. They performed perfectly and Dick glided through his service game for a seven-five third set, the match, and the World Team title for the United States!

We were whooping-it-up and jumping up and down, as were the player’s wives and the other American fans as the four players shook hands at the net. It was a classic win for Dick and Brian who showed class and dignity in victory. We were not surprised by the exceptional sportsmanship and court demeanor they showed throughout the match. Dick and Brian are always the same no matter what match they are playing.

I believe real champions display certain character traits as they perform. In my opinion, when great champions compete (on whatever level) they display a common aura. They offer respect to their opponents. They try to comport themselves with poise. They accept victory with grace and humility, and they give their opponents credit.

When I think of Dick Johnson, I think of the match described above. Rare are the individuals upon whom we bestow our highest esteem as people and competitors. We treasure these friendships and trumpet their character and hope that someday we might achieve the level of respect others have for them. Dick Johnson was such a man.

Dick Johnson was a man who never seemed to age. He was a leader among men; a champion, a man of integrity, a friend, and a great guy. Those of us who knew him and called him teammate will never forget him – ever. Farewell Dick, being your friend was an honor I will always hold dear.

No Quit Tennis Academy - An Inspiration ​
Les Buck
buckles100@gmail.com
May 2019

Almost three years ago, my wife and I moved to Las Vegas to help our daughter with her kids so that she could go back to college and get her elementary school teaching certificate. Shortly after moving there, I randomly met the founders and managers of the No Quit Tennis Academy and the Marty Hennessy Inspiring Children’s Foundation. They invited me to visit. I had some free time — so I took a look.

I had visited several “tennis academies” before (with and without high school education programs) and had generally been unimpressed because of the high prices, and a staff of rather uninspiring tennis pros. Lots of unhealthy extracurricular activities and “trash talk” in the evenings were also academy components. Very little attention was given to the world we live in today, nor was help provided for a young person beginning to navigate his or her way to adulthood.

What I found at Lorenzi Public Park, with a few trailers and private rooms in Vegas, was very different. In my opinion, I found simply the best program for educating young people who are interested in tennis anywhere. Working with both kids whose families could afford to pay (approx. 30%) and with kids from disadvantaged families (70%), this comprehensive program has resulted directly to award more than 135 college scholarships for its students to attend major colleges and universities around the US during the past 12 years. The program’s alumnae have attended Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, Villanova, UNLV, Yale, Norte Dame, Williams, NC State, the Air Force Academy, Harvard, UCLA and many other Division I, II and III schools.

I was so impressed with the programs that I decided to help sponsor a 16 year old kid who came from a very difficult Hispanic family background. He had overcome a weight problem and an addiction to video games and became one of the top 100 players in the National 16 division. More important, Alejandro had a great attitude and positive outlook for “what could be”. He worked hard during his 12 hour day that included tennis, Odyssey Charter School, home school program AP courses, SAT training, community service, meditation and mindfulness training, along with weekend desert retreats. He was recently rewarded with No. 14 in the US National junior rankings for 2018. He received a full financial aid package from Dartmouth College and will join the tennis program as a freshman this fall. I will visit him in New Hampshire this fall/winter and will likely buy him a winter coat since I don’t believe that he has ever seen snow.

The No Quit Tennis Academy program has many similar and deserving young men and women (age 12-17) who would love some form of sponsorship from anyone interested in helping. Also, Las Vegas is a pretty friendly and “fun” town. We have an evening with the Bryan Bros. coming up in July at the new WTT event. Show tickets are almost always available, and several celebrities help sponsor the program. More important, just watching some of the kids train and interact is inspiring. Talking with them is more so. For me, it has definitely been a “win/win” situation.

If you visit, the kids will present their individual “life plan”, and you will probably be asked to present whatever “pearls of wisdom” you would like to share that could offer a teaching moment.

I am delighted that the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association is now up and running and functioning as a very positive force in Men’s Senior Tennis. I wanted to share this information with my fellow senior tennis players (our band of brothers) in the hope that you will become informed and that a few may want to follow up and participate.

Please feel free to contact me at buckles100@gmail.com or call (410) 739-0759 if you care to learn more. You can also google Inspiring Children’s Foundation. If you have a moment to listen, tap the arrow that says, “Tennis Story” and listen to a five minute description of the No Quit Tennis Academy program, narrated by founder Ryan Wolfington. If you are sensitive, have a handkerchief handy.

Getting to Know Lester Sack
Billy Crawford
billyecrawford@gmail.com
May 2019
​
Lester Sack grew up in the small town of Clarksdale, located in the agricultural region of the Mississippi Delta. In his youth, he attended Clarksdale High School, participating in all sports, but playing limited tennis.

Lester vividly remembered, “My father let me borrow his Bancroft tennis racquet.” He added, “Playing mixed doubles, we won the Mississippi High School Mixed Doubles State Championship. I was not good enough to play singles.” It would be the first of his many championships. In March, he won his latest – the 80 singles at the Raymond James West Coast Super Senior Gran Prix Tournament held in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Following high school graduation Lester entered Tulane University in New Orleans. He recalled, “I knew that Tulane had a good academic program and a good tennis program. Coach Emmett Pare’, who had been an accomplished professional tennis player and toured with Bill Tilden, was widely known for being an excellent teacher, coach, as well as a player, so I decided to walk-on at Tulane.”

Tulane and Coach Pare’ had a lasting influence of his life. Sack said, “Coach Pare’ taught us how to hit a stroke; he was not a ‘drill’ coach. He believed in having us play, watching and later correcting our mistakes then working with us on our weaknesses and on strategies. I listened to Coach Pare’ and tried 100% of the time! By playing constantly, he could measure our progress. We had an advantage at Tulane since we were able to practice year-round in New Orleans.”

Lester played on the varsity tennis team that won three consecutive Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 1956,’57 and ’58. (Freshmen could not play varsity in those days.) During his varsity career, he lost only three single matches, and like most players, he remembers the defeats more than the victories. (He later defeated each of the players to whom he lost.)
He and teammate Ron Holmberg won the SEC No. 1 doubles and reached the 1958 NCAA quarterfinals.

After graduating from Tulane with degree in history and psychology, he served in the military. Once he completed his service duty, he returned to Clarksdale and became involved in farming, which he pursued until 1977. At that point, he became a pro at the Racquet Club of Memphis. In 1982 he returned to New Orleans as Tennis Director at the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, staying until 1996. He now is a realtor with Latter & Blum in New Orleans.

Recently I asked Lester to mention a few of the most skilled tennis players he had played against in his career?

“There have been many,” he admitted. “I played Roy Emerson in the third round of the French Open. Others include John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Alex Olmedo, Ron Holmberg, Tony Roche and Ham Richardson. I played against Arthur Ashe when he was 17 years of age on grass in South Orange, New Jersey, breaking his serve in the first game! I played ‘Bitsy’ Grant in the final of the Georgia State Open in 1959, winning in three sets. (Did I fail to mention Bitsy was 48 years old and I was 25!) Ron Holmberg and I won 1965 Canadian Open Doubles Championship and I lost in the singles final in five sets to Holmberg in the same tournament.”

Lester continues to train and play and is looking forward to playing in the 85s after next year. He concluded, “There have been many friendships established with the senior players over the years, highlighted by the camaraderie on the various US Teams. I am fortunate indeed to affirm the adage that ‘Tennis is a Game of a Lifetime’.”

Suggestions from Players and Tournament Directors to Improve Senior Tournaments
Paul Fein
lincjeff1@comcast.net
February 2020

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”– Pericles

As Pericles wisely observed about politics, we all have a stake in tournaments that are run skillfully, safely, fairly, and enjoyably.

Several senior players and tournament directors have shared their expertise and experience about how we can improve national and sectional senior tournaments. Here are their thoughtful suggestions on a wide range of important issues.
We would like you to ponder these suggestions. Then feel free to comment on them and offer your own suggestions so that senior tennis in America reaches its vast potential.

Life-Saving Defibrillation
Jimmy Parker, who has been ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in every age group from 35 to 75 and won 137 national senior singles and doubles titles, and 26 world championships:

Over the years, all of us have heard stories of players who have suffered heart attacks while playing tennis. For those that didn’t make it, we often hear “Well, he passed doing what he loved to do.” But given the choice, everyone would opt to live to play another day!

That’s where AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillators) come in. These devices can restore normal heartbeat, and dramatically increase the chances that someone with cardiac arrest or arrhythmia will survive. We’re talking a 60% to 90% increase in their odds! Importantly, the machines give verbal instructions that allow someone with no experience to operate them. They can be used in conjunction with CPR until medical help arrives.

The cost of a machine ranges from $1,200 to $2,000. Your NSMTA has a program which provides a $500 stipend to any club which runs a national tournament, and doesn’t yet have an AED. Scores of tennis players can attest to their effectiveness.

Shouldn’t all tennis facilities have them? Let’s help save lives!

Media Matters
John Mayotte, ranked No. 2 nationally in 70 singles in 2018:
I suggest we ask Tennis magazine, Florida Tennis, Inside Tennis, and other American tennis magazines to write at least one feature a year about senior tennis. It’s also vital that tournament staffers cooperate fully with local television and newspapers reporters to provide information and photos each day so that tournament matches and players are covered properly. Remember that reporters especially want to highlight area players, elite players, and players with highly interesting back stories.

The elite players and the many others who compete regularly in national and sectional tournaments are amazing in many ways. Despite various injuries and ailments and declining physical assets, they compete with the same passion as they did 20, 40, and 60 years ago, and their level of play is impressive.

Senior players deserve their fair share of coverage in the print media, on the Internet, and on TV, especially Tennis Channel. These remarkable athletes also inspire others to continue playing and competing. Senior players prove tennis is indeed the sport for a lifetime.

Getting Social
Drew Meyers, currently a Vice President of USTA Southern, and has served two terms on the USTA Adult Competition Committee:

For senior divisions (55 and up), the social aspect is important. Tournaments with a robust social component (player dinners, for example), are great fun, and in my experience, have a high return rate for players year in and year out. The two top senior events in Louisiana, the Bocage Super Cat 2 in Baton Rouge and the Cat 1 60 and 65 clay courts in New Orleans, emphasize this aspect, which is well-received by the players.

For the younger age divisions (35s-45s), the length of a tournament seems to impact participation. These players are often parents of younger children and also work full time, and as a result, they cannot be away from home for 5-6 days. Tournaments with modified formats that provide an appropriate amount of play within a shorter time frame (1-, 2-, and 3-day events) may work best for them. So shorter events for the younger divisions may be a way to improve this part of senior tennis.

Tournament Prizes
Ned Buckman, director of the National Men’s Super Senior Hard Court Tournament for players ages 75 through 90 at Laguna Woods, California, for the past 45 years:

Our situation is somewhat different from many other super senior tournaments. Laguna Woods is a retirement village of some 17,000 residents, and our tennis facility is a part of this community, and, as such, is not a privately run tournament for profit.

Players of our age are reluctant to travel under any circumstances, and many of these players have already accumulated a significant history of tournament play. Therefore, we have made it our goal to provide as much incentive as possible to generate a larger entry.

We not only award the gold silver and bronze balls supplied by the USTA, but a full feed-in consolation with at least a 32 draw with prizes for the consolation winners and fourth-place finisher in the main draw.
We also provide a Continental breakfast at our club every morning, a complimentary dinner on Tuesday (with a modest fee for guests), a Subway lunch on Wednesday, and an ice cream social on Thursday. We also offer hotel rate accommodations. Additionally, every entrant receives a shirt and a bunch of other goodies. Even with all of this, we still have sufficient funds for additional social activities for the club members. Finally, our tournament has the lowest entry fee of any of the SS Cat 1 tournaments.

In sum, I believe that if TDs want to increase their profit, it would be in their best interest to generate as much incentive for players to attend as possible.

Scoring System
Anonymous:
My first suggestion involves preserving the traditional scoring system in senior tournaments because I believe tennis has one of the best scoring systems in all of sports. All main draw matches should continue to be best-two-of-three sets. East Coast Florida Tournaments in 2019 used a 10-point tiebreaker in lieu of the traditional third set for the 75, 80, and 85 divisions. This much-abbreviated set is clearly not a fair test of skill, mental toughness, and stamina, which are three of the great essentials of tournament tennis. Therefore, only traditional scoring should be used in USTA-sanctioned tournaments.

My second suggestion is for consolation events, which are very important because they give more players a chance to play more matches. Players who lose their first match should be required to sign up for the consolation event. They should not automatically be entered in the consolation event because this practice often results in no-shows.

Athletic Trainer
Neal Newman, winner of 40 USTA national doubles titles, 4 ITF world doubles titles (with Larry Turville), and ITF two world team championships.

I suggest that every tournament arrange for an on-site athletic trainer/physical therapist/massage therapist. Senior players suffer from a wide array of physical pains and injuries—knee, hip, elbow, wrist, shoulder, back, ankle, etc. As a body-deficit-inclined player, I have worn various braces for 35 years. An athletic trainer on site can make the difference between your performing capably or being forced to retire. I really appreciate it when my pain recedes so I can play and my joints can take the impact of ball-striking. It also helps if braces, compression sleeves, and other medical supplies are available for purchasing if needed.

At the recent Category 2 senior nationals at Academia Sánchez-Casal in Naples, Florida, Joanne Nicodemis, LMT, from Body Helix was available to the players. Her services were utilized consistently and much appreciated. Paul Settles, who runs a player-friendly, national senior father-son tournament in Claremont, California, always arranges for some body-work experts to be at the tournament to help the players.

Let’s encourage this practice to be the norm!

Match Scheduling
Steve Solomon, director of Wilson-Super Cat 2, Crabel Masters, national 60 hard courts, 90 nationals, and National H & W; vice chair of USTA Adult Competition Committee for four years; and author of USTA Tournament Director Handbook:

As senior players age, we continue to have serious responsibilities involving our home, work, health, and myriad small problems. Therefore, to stage successful and largely trouble-free tournaments, directors need to understand who our customers, the players, are and to try our best to cater to their needs.
It is extremely important that National Category 1 and 2 tournaments schedule the entire week’s matches in advance. So whenever you put the draw online, you should include the schedule at least four or five days early.

This early scheduling enables players to plan their personal and family schedules. Several big tournaments, such as the Wilson-Super Cat 2 and the National H & W, have followed our lead and schedule correctly. It takes some work and understanding, but you can schedule events with more than 700 players competing in two or three categories for five or six days. In some instances, you may be able to schedule only up to the semifinals, but that works. When you get to semis and players compete in different divisions or categories, it’s difficult to predict who will win and play in the semis. Also, it doesn’t matter because the players know they may play on the weekend anyway.

To handle scheduling this way and deal with the various needs and requests of players, you need to understand and appreciate players’ problems. You have to be reasonable and flexible on some matters, but also firm on other matters where you clearly explain to players that you cannot accommodate them on certain requests.

Three Recommendations
Ron Tonidandel, winner of six Gold Balls, six Silver Balls, five Bronze Balls in Father-Son doubles and two Bronze Balls in 80 singles:

Here are some ideas for improving tournaments and getting more players to enter.
Have competent officials always present — Referees should be on duty from start to finish to deal with any questions or disputes that may arise, and especially at crucial junctures. For example, a Referee walking away from a match when a 3rd set tiebreaker is starting is totally wrong and unacceptable.

Respect players’ rights and well-being — tournament officials should know and comply with rules regarding matches per day and the time between matches, as follows: USTA: 65-80 2 matches, 85-90 2 matches, only one singles. The minimum rest between matches is for 50-90 events is 90 minutes, and 2 hours if the apparent temperature (combined index of heat and humidity) reaches 90 degrees. Also, “When a Referee has sufficient time available, the Referee should provide players with an adequate amount of rest and not just a minimal amount of rest.” Comment, USTA Reg III.C.1. Many officials do not even seem to be aware of these rules, let alone apply them, at the players’ peril. Players’ rights and well-being are disregarded frequently and wrongly.

Promote and conduct meaningful consolations — More effort needs to be put into consolations and participation encouraged. Right now they’re almost meaningless and often not even held. A Cat I winner gets 1,000 points—a Cat I consolation winner gets a handful of points. This is ridiculous and should be changed to provide incentive for players (a) to play consolations, and (b) to finish the consolation and not default after winning one or more matches, which now is commonplace.

Player-Focused Strategies
Ed Trost, director of the Super Category II Wilson World Tennis Classic, the largest USTA-sanctioned senior tournament, for the past 14 years:

As a tournament director, I adopted much of what I had learned from my previous life as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies in the areas of customer service and sales strategies. Here are three highly important and much-appreciated player-focused strategies.

Return phone calls and emails promptly — You should make as a priority returning emails and phone calls from players or prospective players within 24 hours, if not sooner. Players want to feel that the TD cares, and this is one mutually beneficial way of showing that. Over the years, players often commented about how great it was to get a quick reply.

Listen to players — TDs should welcome constructive criticism. As Ben Franklin noted, “Critics are your friends because they point out your faults.” Of course, players are not always right. But even when they are only partly right, their insight or suggestion can spark a discussion that can spark a solution to a problem. So listen carefully, patiently, and respectfully to critical players and informed spectators.

Post draws and schedules early — Whenever possible, ensure that draws and a FULL schedule (with perhaps the final days as an exception) are available to players at least one week before the first day of the tournament. This allows players to make travel and other plans they require far enough in advance.
These are just a few of the ways a tournament director can demonstrate their “player first” mentality. What other best practices do you employ?

I would like to thank these players and tournament directors for their valuable information and advice to advance senior tennis.If every tournament adopted these splendid suggestions, many more seniors would enter tournaments and their experiences would be more enjoyable than ever.

Paul Fein has received more than 40 writing awards and authored three books, Tennis Confidential: Today’s Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies; You Can Quote Me on That: Greatest Tennis Quips, Insights, and Zingers; and Tennis Confidential II: More of Today’s Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies. Fein is also a USPTA-certified teaching pro and coach with an Elite rating, former director of the Springfield (Mass.) Satellite Tournament, a former top 10-ranked men’s open New England tournament player and No. 1-ranked Super Senior player in New England. His websites are www.tennisconfidential.com and www.tennisquotes.com. His email address is: lincjeff1@comcast.net.

The Nemesis ⎼ Then And Now
Richard Shipman
rshipman3@carolina.rr.com
February 2019
​
We all have our nemeses in tennis. These are players who may not necessarily be better than you, but for one reason or another, they consistently find a way to beat you. Hanni Ayoub was my nemesis at the age 12.

I learned to play tennis in Cairo, Egypt in the ‘50s, where my father was an engineer with the World Health Organization. We had access to the Gezira Sporting Club, which was built by the British during their years in Egypt, complete with real red clay courts, ball boys (first and only time!), and professionals who knew how to teach. I loved tennis from the start, and soon began playing in junior tournaments. That’s where I met Hanni Ayoub, an Egyptian native of Cairo. As I recall, we played to a draw at one set each in our first match – I’m not sure why we stopped – but after that he had my number. I think I was at least as good a player, but Hanni was the classic “pusher” and I didn’t have the tools, patience or experience to deal with that.

Flash forward 55+ years to 2014. I had just aged into the 70s and wanted to make a run while I was the “young pup,” so I entered the St. Petersburg Super Cat II tournament that concludes the Florida Grand Prix series. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the list of competitors and saw the name Hanni Ayoub! How many people by that name and about my age play competitive tennis? As coincidence would have it, just the month before I had been cleaning out old boxes and came across a brochure for a tournament that I had played in Cairo, printed in (sort of) English and Arabic. I was listed as Dick Chickman, and there was Hanni Ayoub in my bracket.
I took the program with me to St. Petersburg to confirm my theory. When Hanni appeared, I recognized him immediately. I inquired if he had been in Cairo in the 50’s, which he acknowledged. He had emigrated from Egypt and was living and working in Canada. He then looked in amazement at the program that contained many names he knew and recognized. Later, I forwarded to him copies of the program that he could share with his family.

The perfect conclusion to this amazing coincidence would have been if I had played him and beaten him decisively with my new skills and mental strength that neutralized his pushing techniques. Unfortunately, we didn’t play, but the amazing coincidence and a chance to reconnect after almost 60 years made this a memorable experience.

This story makes several points: how blessed we are to play competitively at age 12 and age 70; what a small world we competitive tennis players share; how many great stories come out of tournaments beyond the actual tennis; and finally, your nemesis will always be your nemesis until you figure out how to beat him.

Unfortunately, I never got to do that with Hanni Ayoub.

On Serve: Steffi Graf and Mark Rothko
David Linebarger
linebarg14@gmail.com
December 2018
This article was originally published in Cagibi Express, September 6, 2018

I picture her alone before a late Rothko painting, his darkening palette. Steffi’s favorite color was black. Rothko’s floating color field, “a universe for viewers they do not have in the real world.” Black a type of protection, a barrier against stalkers, reporters, celebrity, noise. Black a tunnel, a cave, a hole, a portal. The inevitable turning towards light, the quest for tennis perfection. How do you enhance a gazelle-like sprinter’s speed, a skidding knifed backhand that rarely missed, the power and precision of the greatest forehand in the history of women’s tennis? Steffi racing fast forward to whatever was next: the next serve, the next point, the next changeover, the next tournament. Black the color of mourning, of grief: the father she loves in prison for tax evasion related to Steffi’s earnings, that crazy misguided stalker assailant stabbing Monica Seles to help Steffi become #1. Emotions “intimate and human.” Limitless space, the sublime. “Silence is so accurate.”

Taxonomy of a Tennis Player
W. Newton Jackson, III
​twohandforehand@gmail.com
December 2018

“Taxonomy: the science of classification of organisms, divided into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.”
Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition, 1999

For example, human beings are classified thus:

Kingdom—Animalia
Phylum—Chordata
Class—Mammalia
Order—Primates
Family—Homidae
Genus—Homo
Species—Sapiens

In recent years, geneticists (scientists who specialize in genetics) have determined that, because tennis players have so many idiosyncrasies, they deserve their own taxonomy. This paper will explore the various classifications and then focus on one particular mutation.

Kingdom
Millions, if not billions, of people in the world at one time or another have struck a tennis ball with a tennis racket. They constitute the Kingdom.

Phylum
Within the Kingdom are PESTs, People who Engage in the Sport of Tennis purely for recreation and social-networking. They eschew indoor courts and play on a seasonal basis, usually with friends. They are happy with their sporadic play and modest level of skill.

On the first nice day in spring, PESTs occupy all the public courts in your town. While you patiently wait for them to finish their match, they chat incessantly on change-overs. They blithely walk onto adjoining courts without warning to retrieve their balls, shambling behind you as you begin to serve or race back to retrieve a lob. PESTs remain in the Phylum.

Class
Tennis Players (TPs) want to improve their skills. They take individual or group lessons from a professional. They may go to a tennis clinic or camp. TPs play year-round, indoors and out, and at least twice a week. They play in leagues. He or she will own at least two rackets and will restring them on a regular basis. They know the rules of tennis. TPs like competition, but they do not crave it. For that reason, they stay in the Class.

Order
Very Serious Tennis Players (VSTPs) strive to reach the top.
They are not afraid to lose, i.e., they always try to compete against someone better than they are, even if it means placing themselves across the net from someone they abhor.
They get their USTA card and enter regional and national tournaments in their particular age bracket. The skill level of these players is very high.

Many played in college on NCAA Division-1 teams and went on to other non-tennis pursuits. Some are teaching professionals. There is no monetary compensation for winning, but only ranking points. In addition to heightened competition, frequent losses, injuries, and financial outlays, tournament players must endure the hassles of long-distance travel, hotel-booking, arranging transportation to the venue, and adjusting to different surfaces—grass, clay, and hard courts. Because of dress codes at certain clubs, each player must own at least two sets of white tennis-court apparel.

VSTPs, however, lack the skill, speed, and stamina to be part of the Family.

Family
The Family consists of those who have attained an extremely high level of competency in tennis. Most of them earn their living from playing in tennis tournaments all over the world year-round.

Genus
Within the Family, there are those players who are far superior in skill to VSTPs and who can compete on a regular basis with members of the Family. What sets them apart, however, is their lack of desire to attain world-class status. They are pursuing other endeavors—professional, entrepreneurial, social, artistic, religious, etc.—and therefore are carved out of the Family into their own Genus.

Most, if not all, of the Founding Members of the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association occupy this Genus.

Mutant Species
(tennisias bunkyias transchoptankianis)
“Mutation: the permanent alteration of the nucleotide sequence of the genome of an organism resulting from errors during DNA replication.”
Wikipedia, 2018.

A mutant species of tennis player was first discovered south of Maryland’s Choptank River in an area H.L. Mencken dubbed “Transchoptankia.” (He did not intend it as a compliment.”) Since then, it has spread to other isolated pockets of the country.

Abbreviated TBT and known shorthand as a “tennis bunky,” this species is solely of the male sex. Geneticists are unable to explain why the female sex is not included within this mutation, but have concluded that nature knows what’s best, once again proving that women are stronger, if not smarter, than men.

The TBT may be of any age and fall within any socio-economic category, race, ethnicity, marital status, or sexual orientation.

The term “tennis bunky” does not appear in any dictionary, but it is very similar to the Australian connotation of the word “mate.”

One geneticist has opined that TBTs are a throwback to the brave English soldiers in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Fifth:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother
Be he never so vile.

And, yes, vileness does abound among TBTs, and for that reason inclusion within the mutant species is not precluded by disfiguring physical characteristics, mental illness, aberrant personality, or criminal conviction.

A TBT must, however, be an honest line-caller.

A TBT does not belong to a private club; he plays on public courts.

In the event a TBT is invited to play at a private club, he will remember to bring a shirt, keep his beer cooler in the car, and refrain from dropping F-bombs when he misses a shot.

He will play outside as long as the temperature is above 40 degrees Fahrenheit and wind speed is below level four (“moderate breeze”) on the Beaufort Scale.

Court apparel tends to be unorthodox, if not ragged.

A TBT does not insist that new balls be opened.

A TBT does not restring his racket until one breaks.

Deviation from strict tennis etiquette is permitted. A TBT may call foot-faults against players on the adjoining court, but he must refrain from calling their lines.

Laxity in the use of tennis terms is standard. For example, when the score is thirty-all, he may say “thirty-deuce” or at fifteen-love, simply “five.” Most of the time, he doesn’t announce the score.

If “sudden death” is used for scoring, it need not take place at forty-deuce (to use an expression), but may be deferred until fifty-all or even sixty-all.

When playing on university tennis courts, stopping a match when a pretty coed walks by is permissible, but the TBT must keep in mind that, to her, he looks like a grandfather. Play must resume quickly.

Change-overs are brief unless the police have arrived to ticket a TBT’s car. In the event a tow-truck appears, additional time is afforded to prevent repossession.

A TBT on pre-trial release and wearing a electronic monitoring ankle bracelet is spotted three games per set.

A TBT discourages his ex-wife from showing up courtside for the purpose of collecting back child support or alimony.

A TBT who abandons the court when a process server with a subpoena approaches must continue the match within three days or be forfeited.

A TBT competes fiercely, but he also knows how to have fun, for example, splitting a six-pack after a match and ripcording three beers before going home.

Merriment, good cheer, and camaraderie ensue, but snags can occur. One afternoon, a TBT surprised his fellow players by saying that he could not indulge in post-match festivity. He had just remembered that his wife was at the ER. He had dropped her off on the way to play tennis and thought it was probably time to pick her up.

As I said, a “mutant species.”

Seniors Moments
Barry Buss
barrybuss1964@yahoo.com
December 2018
This article was originally published in The Doctor, February 2017

Its winter in the desert, another picture post card day in the Coachella Valley. The annual pilgrimage to Mission Hills Country Club for the Asics has begun, advertised as the largest senior tennis tournament in the world.

They have it all at the Asics. Men's, Women's, Singles, Doubles, Mixed. The 30s to the 90s, the earlier rounds played at the various clubs throughout the area, the later rounds at the aging but still upscale Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Ca.

Reflecting upon senior tennis, something about playing in a town named for a Mirage resonates with me. Is any of this endeavor real? I mean, I know its a level 2 event, with all sorts of international ranking points, (one level below the sacred USTA national events that dole out the gold balls.) but that's only relevant for a handful of players who are here for the glory and not just the experience.

The timing of this annual event always comes up against the second week of the Australian Open, taking place half a world away, but as for the level of tennis played, it feels like a different galaxy. As tennis goes, that's where the real tennis is being played, the best players in the world competing for immense cash and prizes.

But the Asics is no less of a tournament in the structural sense. There are winners, there are losers, and all the old trappings of competition, the unsteady hand under pressure, the deep feelings of gratification when navigating through a tricky predicament. It all returns in flashes. Whether it matters in any real sense is irrelevant. What matters is it feels like it matters, and that makes it as real as anything taking place on the other side of the world. Lets just say the players on television do not hold a monopoly over the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat.

I come to the desert behind the goading of a couple gentlemen I frequently train with. Well, train is being a bit generous. We hit balls together regularly. Nobody's really working on anything. Facts are we're all on the wrong side of 50. Our skills have been deteriorating for some time now, right before our very eyes. Not from lack play; we all get out there regularly. There's just no quick fix for fighting time.

We understand to be still is to regress. We've entered the adaptive stage of tennis. Its very Darwinian. We must evolve. What used to work on a tennis court 20 years, (and pounds ago,) results in pure folly today. Put simply, if I work hard this year, I may stay the same, or only get a little worse. If I opt not to play at all, it's pretty much all over. There's no taking breaks at this age. The climb back to proficiency is a bridge too far.

As for my inspiration to return to competition this week in the desert, I have a couple friends. The first one is Mike. You've likely never heard of him, but that's ok, he prefers it that way. He's a husband and a father and a Bruin and one of my favorite people. He's also one of the sharpest quickest guys I know...except for one not so little blind spot. His tennis. Mike's been playing these events for years, yet he's the Charlie Brown of the Seniors. I don't even ask how he does anymore. The story remains the same.

"Lost to another f-ing pusher. Why do these guys even play? How do they even look themselves in the mirror? I rip a serve, they block it back. I rip a forehand, they push it back, I come to the net, they lob me ..How can people even play like that? Three shots, not one single stroke, not one back swing, not one rotation on the ball. How is that fun?"

"Hmmm...Have you ever been to the home of a pusher?"

"No! Never!!Why??!!

"Well, Because they're full of trophies."

"Whatever.. I could never play that way"

"Brother, It's tennis evolution. You must learn to play that way. You must evolve, or perish. Tennis Playerithiticus. The next phase in your development. You ever see really old people play? Duffer's doubles. Not much going on out there. A dink here. A dunk there. Nobody moving. We're all heading there buddy. No point fighting it.

"I'll quit before I get like that."

"Or you could train."

"I do train."

"No. No, you do not train. You never drill, you never take a lesson, you couldn't run a lap around the track if a pit bull was chasing you. You're not a member of a gym. I bet you all the money in my wallet you don't know where the nearest gym is. You'd rather look good and lose than do what it takes to win. You're the anti-Brad Gilbert. You're going to be the inspiration behind my next book. 'Ten Easy Steps To Being A Look Good Loser.'

"If you put it that way, I guess I could do more."

"I just think you're leaving a lot of quality on the table of your senior tennis experience. What you're doing now with your tennis is a bunch of sloppy shit, waiting for moments that may never come."

Update: Friend took this lecture to heart. Went to the gym. Immediately over-exerted himself, ripping his shoulder to shreds. He is currently under the care of Physical therapy. In the spirit of Steve Austin, the Bionic Man, we hope they can rebuild him.

And then there's Wade.

Wade is my partner in the men's 50's doubles here in the desert. He is the perfect embodiment of what senior tennis is all about. A late comer to the sport, he missed out on the all important formative years of youth where form gets molded. But then, he also missed out on the jadedness that comes with spending your entire formative years chasing a ball around, for reasons never fully understood.

He is all positivity and enthusiasm, never taking our gifts for granted, playing with an appreciation and gratitude infrequently seen in our sport. Its infectious, and irrepressible, its all attraction, little promotion. Its impossible not to be motivated by his sheer joy at being able to simply get out there and play.

He's everyone's personal inspiration. Without him, I never would have become a published author. Through my writings, he became a better tennis Dad to his son, a son I helped find the right college fit for and who now plays as a freshman in college tennis at Pacific University in Portland. If Wade and I didn't connect a couple years back, a lot of what's happening in our lives might not be happening. So we're more than just partners for the Asics this week. We're in this for the long haul. And that's good.

We take the court against some familiar foes, players I've played and defeated from my past. I used to be able to play this game some, but that was some time ago. Very little preparation went in to this event. Hence very little investment. And it showed. Down 5-0 in about ten minutes, I looked out to the residents walking behind our court. Retirees, all of them. Living in a retirement complex, playing retirement games, in a retirement community. The irony of it all was not lost on me.

A brief show of life in the second set, we raced out to a quick lead, only to give it back just as quickly, losing in straight sets. Normally, a quick loss to players I normally beat would bring forth seething within. But the whole concept of competition has muted for me. My pilot light to conquer, that once burned fiery within is a mere flicker now. Winning now has taken on a whole new meaning. We joke about living in the everybody gets a trophy era, but seriously, to suit up and show up to compete at tennis again after a life of bumps and bruises feels noteworthy.

Back at the main tournament site, I see friends from my past. As I circled the grounds, I kept coming to the question why. Why do people keep putting themselves through these events? I know it's different for everybody, but are they here simply for the exercise, or is it something deeper, something in need of exorcising?

I'd like to think some are here for the fun of it. But tennis competition was never really about fun. Hitting and trash talking with your homeboys every Saturday morning, now that's fun. Its different in tournament competition. To take it too seriously is frowned upon. The war should be over for all those entered in the Asics, weapons laid down some time ago, the bush long left behind.

There's a strong feel of personal challenge here, of overcoming, either circumstances or self. I smile at all the references to joints. No, not the ones you smoke, but new joints. Like new knees, new shoulders, and the most popular of all, the new hips. I wondered if they should have separate divisions. It seems like those of us doing battle with our original hardware are at a disadvantage.

Overheard from one player..."I never used to lose to him, until he got the new hip"

If that's not an artificial performance enhancement, I don't know what is. What I do know is there was little talk about coaching or training, yet a lot of talk about surgeons and physical therapy and rehab.

I asked a few players what they're playing next. Nobody had any idea, but everybody knew what procedure they were undergoing next.

I think in the end tennis has always been about overcoming. It's one of the best ways I know to challenge ourselves. So many parts of life must be in alignment. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. There's always that little voice asking "Can I still do it?"

For it's so much easier not to. Yet we all approach that line once crossed there's no turning back. When dreams turn to regrets. And that day is approaching when we'll no longer have the gift to choose.

And with that in mind, I conclude this first entry of Seniors Moments. I'm pretty sure I'll keep coming back.

On Serve: Suzanne Lenglen and Antoine Watteau
David Linebarger
linebarg14@gmail.com
November 2018
Originally published in Cagibi Express - September 5, 2018

​Imagine that in a hidden corner of Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera, Suzanne Lenglen plays tennis. Dressed more lightly than the spectators in their rococo frills, her body is both concealed and revealed in all its ballet. Lenglen’s every tennis stroke is a musician’s glissando a dancer’s glissade perfectly guided and placed as if on a handkerchief on her opponent’s side of the court. (Her father trained her using real handkerchiefs.) And when the pressure of performance is too great, she sips a little cognac on changeovers. Watteau’s lovers in attendance are thrilled, dazzled. Under the spell of Lenglen, their lovemaking later will be enhanced and forgotten, the island’s reigning sculpture of Venus momentarily superseded by a real-life Goddess of the homely. As the other great players of the 1920s described Lenglen: “You can’t imagine a homelier face” (Helen Wills). “Heaven knows no one could call her beautiful” (Bill Tilden). But Lenglen as Goddess, nevertheless. Goddess as mystique, as popular song. The classic WWI song, “There’s a long, long trail a winding,” became a Lenglen trail of spectators winding more than a mile to see her at Wimbledon. Did Louis the Sun King have that? Goddess meaning she smoked and drank through six consecutive Wimbledon singles titles. Goddess meaning tennis as ballet, tennis as the music of Lully, Rameau. The absolutism of Louis XIV gives way to the rococo dreamscapes of Watteau. WWI gives way, a memory. It is Lenglen who conquers France.

After leaving a career in music (classical guitar) because of a hand injury, David Linebarger earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Davis. Currently a Professor of Humanities at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, his publications include scholarly articles on Wallace Stevens and Modern Music, poetry in over 25 journals, and two chapbooks: War Stories (Pudding House) and Bed of Light (Finishing Line Press). A national tournament tennis player in his age group, his current project includes a series of nonfiction prose poems on famous tennis players.

Why I Play Tennis
Bob Litwin
October 2018

I was asked by a successful hedge fund client why he should keep working when he had certainly made enough money to last a lifetime for him as well as his children. His profit and loss statement was already off the charts, so it no longer served as the motivator for him.

I couldn't tell him why he "should" show up each day. I could, though, tell him why I continue to show up for tennis, despite having accumulated more than enough victories. My tennis cup PNL runneth over.

I thought about why, after 35 years, I continue to enter tournaments, to compete, to put my mind and body through the preparation so that I show up ready to bring the best Bob I can be to the court.

At the beginning, for me, it was all about winning and losing. Who I was, if I was a success or failure, had to do with results only. At first I couldn't beat players who were better than me. That figured. I couldn't beat players I perceived were below me. I felt like a loser. A failure. Then, when I hit the 35s I won a lot. In fact, I won most of the time and it just wasn't enough. The winning didn't seem to mean that much and I didn't feel as good as I thought I would. Winning was too easy because I was just better than a lot of the opponents or I got someone on a bad day. So winning didn't feel that good most of the time. Add to that, losing felt awful no matter how it happened. The whole thing just started to get old and I stopped enjoying playing.

But I wanted it to be special. How could I be good at something and, yet, not enjoy the experience?

So I started to search for what I could pull out of the experience to make it special. I made lists of what I did love about doing the work and competing. Each match had something in it that made it a positive experience. I loved having to find the quiet within the storm. Having to find relaxation in the midst of a perceived stressful situation. I loved developing the craft. New ways to hit the ball. New places on the court. Developing a sense of purpose for each shot. I loved trying to work it out while someone was trying to keep me from doing it. I loved the engagement. How long I needed to pay attention to really get the job done. I loved the stress and pressure of each point being a win/lose experience. I loved attempting to impose my will on my opponent as he tried to do the same to me. I loved when it was close and I had to deal with pressure. I loved, when I lost, having to be a good loser. I loved having to be a good winner. I loved being faced with failure and giving full effort at pushing it away for as long as possible, and sometimes, I if lucky enough, being able to win from the precipice. I loved when pushed to my limit, when it feels like I just can't squeeze out one more drop of focus or effort or energy, finding a little bit more. I loved the effort that I need to put in to get myself to exercise in the gym, to run sprints, to do agility drills. I loved having a reason to eat well,even though I would rather eat badly. I loved the texture of the experience.

Most of all I loved that I constantly needed to do the work of making my days on the court meaningful and special.

It wasn't tennis' job to do that. Waiting for only good results to get myself to feel good was a certain way to be unhappy much of the time. JFK said, "ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what can you do for your country."

I say, ask not what tennis brings to me...ask what I bring to my tennis.

I fail at some or all of these things on some days and I am disappointed but just decide that I will do better the next time. I want to look in the mirror at the end of the day and say, "You did good." The joy of working on the details every day has kept me engaged, focused, interested, happy and young. The fact that I am better today than I was 10 and 20 years ago is a huge payoff. The fact that I will be better tomorrow is what makes me jump out of bed each day.

Bob Litwin
www.LivetheBestStoryofYourLife.com
www.facebook.com/boblitwinauthor

It's a Family Affair
Jimmy Parker
September 2018

These kinds of things don’t make tennis headlines, but they should: Would you believe there’s a family in Chicago that has collected more than 50 gold ball national championships playing only with each other? Jerry Morse-Karzen is the common thread running through all of them.

Jerry and his little boy Brett (who is 6’9”) won their 34th National Father/Son title at the Senior Father/Son Indoor at Cherry Hill, NJ earlier this year. They are a country mile ahead the second-place all-time team of Charlie Hoeveler and his sons Chas and Justin who have combined for “only” 25. But Jerry also won 4 or 5 nationals with his father Richard, and oh yeah, he’s bolstered his gold ball total with another 16 that he’s won with Becky (now Moffatt) in the Father/Daughter!

Having experienced the unique nature of playing the family events with his father Richard, Jerry recruited son Brett at the age of 14 in 1997. Four years later, they combined for their first gold ball, defeating Zan Guerry and John, another multi-generational team. Zan had won the nationals with his father Alex decades before. That apparently opened the floodgates, and there has been a deluge of national championships for the Morse-Karzens since then.

The M-K’s have been so dominant that they have the distinction of being the only team in history to be ranked #1 in the US in both the Open division and the Senior division (father has to be 60 & over) simultaneously! In the recent Indoor, David Chang and his son Jonathon were another team that was able to successfully compete in both the Open and the Senior events. Ironically, they reached the finals of the Open, but only the semis of the Senior. They had the misfortune of running into the Morse-Karzen juggernaut in the semis of the Senior where they lost 6-1, 6-3. With the rangy M-K’s blanketing the net, the Changs remarked that they “couldn’t find much daylight,” a familiar experience for opponents.

So, after all these years, why do the Morse-Karzens continue to compete? Jerry says quite simply, “It’s fun.” Brett adds that it’s a great incentive to stay in shape, and he says with a twinkle, “And we’re still playing pretty well.” They both agree that it is a great bonding experience, where you get to hang out together and work for a common goal. They point out that the teams that play the Father/Son events share a special camaraderie. Many of them have known each other for years, playing each other as up and coming juniors, then as college players, and later as adults with families of their own. And even into the seniors and super-seniors and beyond.

In the early years, the fathers were the big dogs and the sons are just trying to hang in with the adults. Before long, the sons are shouting “Mine!” more often and the teams are somewhat balanced. As the sons improve and the fathers age, it becomes the fathers who are trying to hang in against the power and athleticism of the young guys. In effect, the fathers are tasked with trying to slide downhill more slowly than the sons improve.

​Jerry and Brett acknowledge what a great group of players are drawn to play the family events. The tournaments in some ways resemble an Old Home Week, with fiery matches during the day, and dinners with long-time friends and opponents in the evenings. Put a bunch of tennis players at the table and the tall tales are going to start to flow. Jerry says he remembers more about his father/son tennis than the matches he played on the tour. Maybe that’s another one of the reasons we keep playing – for all the stories we can tell…

Lobbing in Lugano
Norman Ashbrooke
August 2018

If you enjoy playing on red clay, and the travel bug is a familiar companion, then Lugano, Switzerland should be on your bucket list. The Lugano Seniors Open is an ITF grade 1 tournament that is played in one of Europe's most scenic resort towns. Lugano is located near the Swiss-Italian border and boasts a lakeside view that few venues could surpass. The tournament had a plethora of outstanding international senior players in all age divisions.

My first excursion into European clay court tennis began last July in Lugano. The tournament matches were not given specific starting times, instead an order of play was published that tells each player what court he is assigned and that his match would not begin before a certain time. The entire atmosphere was quite casual even though some players would get quite emotional. Remember, we were near the Italian border. Nevertheless, the players were friendly, and the staff was helpful despite the fact that English was a real challenge. Switzerland has four official languages, unfortunately English is not one of them. I muddled through nevertheless and talked my opponents into announcing the score in English.

My wife and I spent two weeks touring Switzerland before the tournament started. Our Swiss tour guide told us that within every Swiss person lurks a policeman. I can believe it because the lady behind the tournament desk insisted that each player receive just one banana. Any player, including yours truly, caught with a second banana had to deal with the wrath of a real banana cop.

Playing on red clay was a new experience for me. I must say it was different and a lot of fun. Trying to maintain my balance and not fall down was quite a challenge. The slippery surface was tough on a hard court junkie like myself. I managed to win my first match quite easily but lost my second match to a seeded player. Probably the best part of the tournament for me was getting the chance to meet and practice with players who really knew their way around a clay court. Overall it was a great experience, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves the game. ​

Let's Reform the Ranking System
Paul Fein
July 2018

“Just because you’re not interested in politics doesn’t mean politics doesn’t have an interest in you,” Pericles said.

This timeless aphorism applies to tennis politics. Ranking systems may not interest every tournament player. But they should because every player receives a ranking and every player’s ranking should reflect his actual tournament record. Put differently, no one should lose in the rankings what he’s won fair and square on the courts.

What are the criteria required for an accurate—and thus fair—ranking system?

And what’s wrong with the much-criticized USTA’s senior men’s ranking system that counts only 4 tournaments for a national ranking?

The worst flaw in the current senior national rankings is that not all tournament results count. Because the top 100 men’s singles players in the 55-60-65-70-75 divisions averaged 6.74 tournaments (from Jan. 1 to Dec. 15, 2014) and 6.38 tournaments (from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2015 *), an average of
2.74 tournaments — 41% — were not counted in the “Best 4” rankings for 2014; and an average of
2.38 tournaments — 37% — were not counted in the “Best 4” rankings for 2015.

The specific 2014 and 2015 tournament participation breakdown averages are as follows:

• 6.2 and 6.3 tournaments in the 55 division

• 6.9 and 6.4 tournaments in the 60 division

• 6.7 and 6.4 tournaments in the 65 division

• 7.0 and 6.5 tournaments in the 70 division

• 6.9 and 6.3 tournaments in the 75 division. (* 81 players in 2015)

The first sine qua non of all tennis ranking systems historically is that all tournament results must count. This principle applies to all regular-season and playoff results in the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA—both for team standings and individual player statistics.

Anything less would sully and invalidate the standings and individual statistics of these major sports leagues. You can imagine the outrage by players and fans if the NBA decided to throw out the Golden State Warriors’ 20 worst games or Lebron James’ 20 least productive games.

Tennis’ time-tested tradition of counting all tournament results ended when the ATP adopted a “Best-14” ranking system in 1990. Its tenuous rationale was that this innovation would induce or bribe unwilling players to play at least 14 tournaments, only if the ATP threw out the results of their worst tournaments.

The “Best 14” succeeded in increasing the average number of singles tournaments played—but it also decreased Davis Cup and doubles participation, while not decreasing participation in exhibition events. Worst of all, it ruined the ATP ranking system by producing inaccurate rankings.

Today’s ATP and WTA rankings systems are a hybrid in the sense that the four Grand Slam events and nine Masters 1000 events and four Premier Mandatory events are “mandatory” and thus automatically count in the rankings. The rest of the 17 ATP and 16 WTA tournaments that count come from players’ best non-mandatory tournaments. For many pro players, 1 to 10 of their tournaments still do not count in the rankings. A ranking system must count all results to produce accurate, and thus fair, rankings.

The second sine qua non of a valid ranking system is that it must use a point average that divides the total number of points earned by the total number of tournaments played. A point average system uses a “minimum divisor.” The fairest “minimum divisor” for 45 to 80 Super Senior age divisions is 6. Why?

First, a national ranking is always extremely important, but especially so in a country with 17 sections that vary greatly in strength and depth. At least 6 tournaments provide sufficient tournaments to measure accurately everyone’s record.

Second, 6 tournaments is a reasonable minimum number, considering that only one national tournament is required to be eligible for a national ranking.

The total number of tournaments that count in current “Best-whatever-number” ranking systems is analogous to the number used as the “minimum divisor” in point-average ranking systems. The “minimum divisor” simply means that if, for example, you play fewer than 6 tournaments, your point total is still divided by 6 to determine your point average. If you play more than 6 tournaments, your point total is divided by the exact number of tournaments you play to determine your point average.

Have Super Senior players cared about the “Best 4” rule? Based on the aforementioned evidence, they have not cared. If they truly had great financial difficulty playing 4 tournaments, as the USTA claims, why did only 11% of the 500 ranked players in 2014 and again only 11% of the 481 ranked players in 2015 play in exactly 4 tournaments? And, even among that 11%, were there reasons other than financial hardship why they did not play 5 or more, and perhaps many more, tournaments? The only way we can know for sure is to ask that 11%.

However, we do know that Super Senior players decide to enter a given tournament—or not enter a given tournament—as well as enter a given number of tournaments during a given year for various reasons.

These reasons, besides the expenses involved, include, but are not limited to:

• time required

• travel distance

• the likely or actual quality of the field

• environmental conditions: heat, humidity, wind and altitude

• court surface

• how one has fared there in the past

• the quality of the facilities

• the time or season of the year

• the competence and integrity of the tournament director

• one’s current playing form and recent results

• one’s current overall health and that of one’s family

• business and family commitments

• one’s current injury status

• mortality factor

• loss of interest

• a consideration of how one can best improve, or at least not hurt, one’s ranking based on the ranking rules and related factors, such as the amount of points awarded at a given tournament. Of course, these same reasons can apply to all players, especially those who played 3 or less tournaments in a given year.

Once again, no player should wrongfully lose in a flawed ranking system what he rightfully won in tournament competition.

Therefore, to produce fair rankings and to increase player participation, in 2019 the USTA should increase to 5 the number of tournaments that count. At the end of 2019, in consultation with our National Senior Men’s Tennis Association, the USTA should evaluate both the tournament participation numbers and the players’ conclusions, and then determine how many tournaments should count in 2020. As recommended earlier, 6 tournaments is the ideal minimum number.

The third criterion is the awarding of points based on how many rounds a player or doubles team advances in a tournament. This formula started in 1973 when the ATP created the sport’s first computer rankings. Before that, rankings were determined by international, national, and sectional committees which based their rankings substantially, but not totally, on the magnitude and number of a player’s wins and losses. Specifically, that meant terrific wins (viz., wins over players with much better records) greatly helped one’s ranking, while good wins (viz., wins over players with somewhat better records) somewhat helped one’s ranking. Conversely, terrible losses (viz., losses to players with much worse records) greatly hurt one’s ranking, while bad losses (viz., losses to players with somewhat worse records) somewhat hurt one’s ranking. How many rounds one advanced, therefore, carried much less weight.

In retrospect, the ranking system used for our sport’s first 100 years made eminent sense. Why? Because unlike NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL teams which play nearly equal schedules, tennis players often do not, and sometimes the inequality is great. For example, Senior Player A can win a tournament in Portland, Maine, by beating opponents ranked No. 10, No. 20, and No. 30 in New England and earn 100 ranking points. During the same week, Senior Player B can win a tournament of the same ranking value in Los Angeles by beating superior players ranked No. 1, No. 5, No. 10 and No. 15 in Southern California, a much stronger and deeper section, and also earn 100 ranking points. Is that fair? Of course not. Therefore, not taking into account the quality of one’s opponent is the yet another serious flaw in the current USTA ranking system.

This injustice can be counteracted to a modest extent by awarding “bonus points”—as the ATP once did—based on the quality of the opponent. For example, at Category I tournaments, a win over the No. 1-ranked player would merit 100 points, and a win over the No. 2 player 99 points, all the way down to 1 point for a win over the No. 100-ranked player. At Category II tournaments, the bonus points would be half of that for Category I tournaments.

The fourth criterion is the importance and prestige of the tournament. Here the four national championships—clay, hard, grass, and indoors—are rightly rewarded with the most ranking points, 1,000 for the winner. Category II tournaments award 400 points to the winner. This criterion is justified, and the current point distribution is generally fair, both in terms of tournaments of differing importance and in terms of the round-by-round distribution.

Finally, the USTA will only diminish its flawed ranking system even more if it adopts two major features of the Universal Tennis Rankings (UTR). The first feature is “games won.” Prior to the UTR, no ranking system in history factored in the amount of games a player won in matches. Does it matter whether Player A decisively beats Player B 6-2, 6-2 or barely prevails 6-4, 4-6, 6-4? Not at all, because a win is a win and a loss is a loss. The same holds true in basketball, soccer, baseball, football, hockey, and the vast majority of head-to-head team and individual sports. UTR wrongly rewards players for close, competitive losses.

The second feature is “recent history.” UTR defines this criterion as a player’s last 30 matches in the past 12 months. The apparent goal is to indicate a player’s current form based on, in some cases, relatively recent results.

Using only the last 30 matches, however, presents several problems. A light playing schedule—due to injury, illness, or pregnancy—would mean those 30 matches, could easily be played in a two-year or even a three-year period. That would preclude any true measurement of how well a player is performing right now.

Even if the 30 matches take place during 12 or only 6 months, several variables can make a player’s results fluctuate. A key variable is the court surface. For example, from 2012 to 2017, Nadal won four French Open titles and eight Masters 1000 titles on clay. But once the European clay court circuit ended in early June, he floundered on grass, never even reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Personal problems, injuries, and illnesses can also make one’s results change suddenly and markedly. When recovered, these rejuvenated players can dramatically regain their form, as Federer showed when he captured the 2017 Australian Open after a six-month layoff.

For a comprehensive analysis of UTR, go to http://www.sportstarlive.com/columns/vantagepoint-paul-fein/rating-the-universal-tennis-ratings/article23363626.ece.

Just as we get the government we deserve, we get the ranking system we deserve. So get knowledgeable. Then get involved. Our NSMTA can help reform the USTA ranking system with your expertise and effort. We have the power to turn things around if we choose to do so.

The Best Tennis Camp EVER!!!!!!!
Sean Sloane
July 2018

The year was 1971. I had just finished my first year as Tennis & Squash Coach at Williams College, a dream job I never expected to get. I was planning to celebrate my good fortune with a summer on the beaches of Martha's Vineyard. It would be my first summer of NOT teaching tennis since I was 16 years old. Then the phone rang.

Jim Westhall was the Director of Marketing for a condominium development in Bretton Woods, NH. He wanted me to hire and train staff and direct an adult tennis camp at the Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, NH - along with Rod Laver & Roy Emerson. I had 2 questions for Jim. (1) Where was Bretton Woods, NH? (2) Why did he think that Laver & Emerson, both still active on tour, would ever show up in Bretton Woods, NH?

Jim flew me to Boston to meet Laver, on his way back home to CA from Europe. I met the Rocket at Logan Airport. I asked him if he would be in Bretton Woods. He said either he or Emmo or both would be on court every day of the 8 weeks. I was in!

I convinced most of my Williams tennis team to come with me to the mountains. Some of them already had a little teaching experience and the rest caught on quickly. But their teaching skills were not that important because for the 8 weeks of camp either Rocket or Emmo (and for one week, both of them) were with the campers at breakfast, lunch, & dinner, and in the lounge after dinner, plus on court teaching all day. Can you name a week-long tennis camp where an ATP pro interacts with the campers morning, noon & night?

The Mount Washington Hotel, site of the International Monetary Conference in 1944, was a grand old hotel set on 10,000 acres of NH wilderness. 12 red clay courts, an enormous dining room with round tables for 12, and an active bar and lounge with a small band and a singer were the feature attractions. Campers and staff mingled for meals and for drinks and dancing afterwards. At the end of each day's session on court, Rocket or Emmo would lead a charge up the hill, yelling "To the bar!!" After dinner, back to the bar for more drinks and dancing. Aussies really know how to have a good time!! Often enough, if spirits were still high when the bar closed, Emmo would invite the hardcore up to his room for a nightcap at the small bar in his room.

Herbert Warren Wind, tennis writer, visited for the day that first year. He wrote a long opinion piece in the New Yorker Magazine, and called our camp "one of the great bargains of our time." That first summer you got a room, an opening (free) cocktail party, all meals, a minimum of 7 hours of tennis instruction per day, and the right to call Rocket or Emmo your friend, all for $325 per person. Truly "one of the great bargains of our time!!"

Many of our campers came from the New York City area that year, so at least 60 of them showed up at Forest Hills for the US Open on grass, to watch Emmo play 16-year old Bjorn Borg in the first round. Emmo won in straight sets, 6-4,6-4,6-4, and our campers saluted his victory with the Aussie cheer they had learned at camp that summer: "Hooray for Emmo, hooray at last, hooray for Emmo, he's a horse's ass!!"

No question - The Best Tennis Camp EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hardcrab Tennis Tournament
W. Newton Jackson, III
March 2018

This is a short story about an actual, unsanctioned tournament played in a small town in Maryland some thirty years ago. The part about the guy with the two-handed serve is true, as are all the nicknames. The rest is total fiction dreamed up by me but I think it comes close to what a lot of us have experienced in small town tournaments.

One hot Saturday morning some thirty years ago, my doubles partner Tom and I drove to a little town nestled on a sound leading to the Chesapeake Bay where, pardon the cliché, if it’s not the end of the world, you can see it from there. The locals crab in the summer, oyster in the winter, and drink year-round. A distinctive accent prevails among them, and they use unfamiliar locutions such as “There’s a slick cam on the fairway today” which means that the water in the channel is perfectly calm due to an absence of wind, or “She ain’t pretty none” which means that she’s beautiful.

The heat/humidity index was so high that August day that you could not strike a match and get it to light, even if you doused it with gasoline. I suggested to Tom that we go to the IGA store and buy some cabbage leaves to wet down with copious amounts of water. Then, we could stick them inside our floppy white hats, just like the Aussies did back in the 1950s. Tom said no. He thought that that was a bit too much. We were in foreign territory, and such a gesture might be viewed by the natives as ostentatious or, even worse, condescending. Being a physician, he reminded me that a healthy sudation was the best way to evacuate the body of its gross humors and crudities, whatever that meant.

We found the tournament site easily—three tennis courts side by side across the street from the fire station. Parking was on the grassy outside perimeter of the courts. Most of the vehicles were pickup trucks, and a few had gun racks in the back window, so Tom’s candy-apple red BMW stood out like a Playboy bunny in a church choir, except we wouldn’t be spending the next two days with choir boys.
​
We proceeded to the check-in table where we met our first-round opponents, two local fellows, big rugged-looking guys wearing wife-beater tee shirts who introduced themselves as “Scorchy” and “Moo Tit.” The director told us that our match would start in fifteen minutes and take place on one of the end courts. We suspected that their skill-level might be marginal, but they appeared to be in shape, and we had to be ready for anything.

We lost the racket spin, and the other team chose to serve first, which presented us with our first eye-opener of the day. I had seen two-handed backhands, and I had seen two-handed forehands, but until then I had never seen a two-handed serve. After tossing the ball up in the air, Moo Tit grabbed the racket with both hands and slammed down on the ball just like a wood chopper. Once in a while, his serve went in, but most of the time he double-faulted. We were cruising along and about to bagel them when the first interruption occurred. A couple of dogs ran across the court, one chasing the other, and I noticed for the first time that there was a hole in the fence at one end of the court. After shooing them off, we resumed play, but not long after that there was a deafening noise from the fire station siren, apparently signaling the hour to be twelve-noon. We stopped play for five minutes with our index fingers in our ear canals before finishing the match and winning 6-0, 6-0.

Afterwards, we drove to a nearby hotdog stand to grab some lunch—the proprietor had a special on scrapple sandwiches, but we stuck with hot dogs—before returning to the Woodchoppers’ Ball for our next match. (On the way back, a bank’s time-temperature sign said ninety-seven degrees.) Most of the same pickup trucks were still parked courtside, but this time tailgates were down, beer coolers were out, and the morning’s losers—presumably the losers—were slaking their thirst in the oppressive heat. Some girls had also shown up, and they were standing at one court-end or another, depending on where their boyfriend or husband might be playing. For our second-round match, “Skag”—we later learned the director’s nickname—sent us to the same court we had been on in the morning. He said that because “it was hotting” we would play a single ten-game pro set instead of the standard two-out-of-three sets. We found our next opponents already warming up. This always unnerves me because I know we won’t get the warm-up time we deserve and psychologically they have established “ownership” of the court. Silly, I know, but that’s the effect it always has on me, and, more disarming, was the fact that they had solid ground strokes and crisp volleys.

“Bee Bop” and “Jitter” quickly got ahead of us, but not because they were better than us. First, another dog ran onto the court, but this time stopping to urinate—the puddle vanished quickly due to the heat. Second, when I ran back toward the fence to retrieve a high-bouncing ball, my sock got caught in the hole in the fence as I threw up a lob. Third, we heard a heated argument two courts away apparently over a disputed line call, which caused one player to pull down his tennis shorts and moon the other team before he and his partner stomped off the court and roared away in their truck.

Tom and I started playing much better and had gone ahead 9-7 when we noticed a Sheriff’s Department car driving slowly around the courts and realized that the deputy was peering out his window and checking license plates, probably for expired tags. Meantime, our opponents got to 9-8 when Jitter put a drop shot right where the urine spot had been. We were so unnerved that we didn’t even try to run for it.

We welcomed the change-over time to sit down, hood our heads in a towel, and drink some water. On the other side of the court, Bee Bop and Jitter were standing, and each had popped open a beer. Tom pointed to his car where the deputy sheriff was peering inside the windows and gave me a worried look. After half a minute, he left, and Tom said it must have been the out-of-state tags that caught his attention. I thought it was really the outlandish paint job, but I said nothing. Meantime, our two opponents had returned to the court and were eyeing us in a not too friendly way.

Tom prepared to serve for the set, and hence the match, and I was hoping this would indeed be the last game because I was having cold sweats, which meant that I was becoming dehydrated. Suddenly, the ear-shattering wailing of the fire siren once again filled the air, and our two opponents quickly dropped their rackets and ran off the court. In fact, most everyone there jumped into their pickups and drove off, leaving a few of us non-natives standing around.

After fifteen minutes or so, when they still had not come back, it dawned on me that it was a local custom for everyone to go to a fire. We decided to be of use by picking up empty beer cans on the grass and throwing them into a trash can. Bee Bop and Jitter had left their rackets and beer cooler on the court, so we expected them back soon to finish the match. After an hour had passed and no one had returned, I suggested to Tom that we forfeit them, because, if we were victorious, our next match would be the semi-finals on Sunday morning. He looked at me like I was crazy, but off I went anyway, searching for the tournament director to demand that USTA rules be followed, forgetting all the while that this was not a sanctioned tournament and they didn’t apply. A couple of the girls were still at the courts, so I asked them what was going on. One said that Skag was at the fire because he was a volunteer fireman, as were Bee Bop and Jitter. For that matter, she added, so were Scorchy and Moo Tit.

We decided to leave town and head home. We never came back, and to this day we don’t know who, if anyone, won the tournament.

How the NSMTA Will Advance the Sport for a Lifetime
Paul Fein
January 2018

The new and exciting National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) will help senior men’s tennis reach its vast potential. The expertise, experience, and engagement of hundreds of members will greatly advance senior men’s tennis—from the 35 to the 90 age divisions.

These critical areas should receive high priority:

• Increasing substantially the number of NSMTA representatives on the USTA Adult Competition Committee because it makes many major senior men’s tennis decisions. We currently have just two NSMTA members, Mas Kimball and Ed Trost, on the USTA Adult Competition Committee, which has 20 members. Our goal should be to have a majority on this powerful committee.

• Improving the way men’s senior tournaments are run. That includes the scheduling of matches; increasing the number of tournament referees; ensuring the courts and other facilities are in proper condition; ensuring event winners and finalists receive prizes or awards commensurate with the total entry fees and expenses; keeping entry fees reasonable; coordinating, when necessary, with tournament directors; and creating new tournaments and aiding struggling tournaments.

• Increasing media coverage of men’s senior tennis. Let’s contact magazines, newspapers, websites, and TV networks and stations for stories about the NSMTA; for greater coverage of state, sectional, national, and international tournaments and team events; and for features about and interviews with our leading players, tournament directors, and NSMTA leaders.

• Investigating ways that the NSMTA can attract sponsors. The first step could be to create a Sponsorship Committee.

• Investigating how the NSMTA can network with other U.S. and foreign tennis, sports, and non-sports organizations for our mutual benefit. In addition to our female counterpart, the National Senior Women’s Tennis Association (NSWTA), these organizations could include the USPTA, PTR, USRSA, TIA, AARP, and senior tennis associations in other countries.

• Ensuring every segment of men’s senior tennis is treated with fairness and respect. That includes players in every age division; high-ranking, middle-ranking, and low-ranking players; doubles players as well as singles players; frequent tournament entrants as well as infrequent entrants; and players located in different parts of the U.S. Toward that end, our Board should include at least one member from each age decade and from as many different USTA sections as possible.

• Improving the current ranking system to ensure that no players lose in a flawed ranking system what they have legitimately won on the courts. Accurate—and thus fair—rankings also have the beneficial and important byproduct of producing accurate—and thus fair—seedings.

• Encouraging men’s senior players to become involved because their information, analyses, and suggestions are essential to achieve the aforementioned goals. Our already impressive website will be one way members can share their views. I also invite members to contact me at lincjeff1@comcast.net to tell me about my errors of omission and commission and to debate The Great Issues of men’s senior tennis.

Mini-Interview with Jimmy Parker

In each of my posts, I would like to do a mini-interview with a NSMTA member on an important topic. Jimmy Parker, our first president and one of the most successful senior players in history, is the first interviewee.

Do you consider the NSMTA’s relationship with the USTA our most important relationship with any other organization? And if so, why?
I do consider the NSMTA’s relationship with the USTA to be our most important relationship with another organization for the obvious reason that the USTA governs our sport, with all that entails. We recognize that, and want to work with—not against—the USTA in improving the experience of playing men’s senior tennis.

In what ways do you believe the NSMTA can influence and persuade the USTA to make policy and rule changes that will advance senior men's tennis in the U.S.?
That said, the USTA is a large, lumbering organization that moves slowly in making changes. The NSMTA, by its very nature, is smaller and nimbler. We will be able to do things without having them wend their way through the embedded political hierarchy of the USTA. For instance, in January, we inaugurated a new Category III doubles event in Florida with an innovative format—sanctioned by the USTA. The innovative format employs round-robins to qualify teams for the later rounds. Players are guaranteed at least three matches that way.

It takes motivated people to innovate, and hopefully, we can help point the way for the USTA in determining what works and what doesn’t. Realistically, it’s probably easier to affect policy than to get actual rule changes because the process of effecting rule change within the USTA is a somewhat cumbersome legalistic process that may require a couple years. Policy decisions within a committee usually require a less formal process. By having two of our NSMTA Board Members, Mas Kimball and Ed Trost, currently sitting on the USTA Adult Competition Committee, we hope to have a conduit from our organization to the USTA policymakers. However, we consider our mission broader than just our relationship with the USTA.

What else does the NSMTA’s mission entail?
We want to provide a forum for our members to interact with each other to enhance the community of men’s senior tennis. And in concert with the NSWTA, eventually enhance the community of senior tennis in general. Too often in the past, the USTA has directed minimal attention and minimal funding to the players who are literally fulfilling the USTA promise of a “Sport for a Lifetime.”

Paul Fein is a longtime tennis writer whose articles have been published in 25 countries. He's authored three tennis books, including Tennis Confidential, and received more than 40 writing awards, including Tennis Week magazine’s International Tennis Writer of the Year in 1991. As a super senior, he ranked No. 1 in singles in the New England 65 and 70 divisions for five years.

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