Get your motor running

Cardio Tennis is a great way to get your motor running and to improve your tennis at the same time. It's a pure exercise clinic, and no room for doubles play at the end. Just running down balls and hit FHs and BHs repeatedly across the court. This Wednesday morning group was tiny, but they worked hard. If you haven't tried a Cardio Tennis session yet, sign up for Saturday 11-12 or Wednesday 9-10. Get your motor running!

Meredith, Alice, Stephanie, and the boom box.

Monday Night Team Tennis Standings as of July 17

Team Larry: 505*                                            Team Magnus:  533*

*The score from 7/9 is missing... I am trying to locate the score sheet. It got lost in the bar when they figured out who should be charged for the drinks... Larry won that night, so with that score added to the total above, Larry will be in the lead.

Summer in the city

If you haven't noticed it, it is summer in the city of Boston. On the courts at Longwood, fathers and their sons from all over the country are competing for the 2012 Father/Son Grass Court Gold Ball. Good tennis was played all day Monday, also into the evening when the Monday Night Team Tennis took over the courts. We had 9 courts going. KC, Kathy, Jacqueline, Steve, and Jeff played for the first time this year, and were quite happy afterwards when they found out that they were all (except Jacqueline) on the winning team and got a free drink. But Miss J was still happy and enjoyed playing in the event.

Larry was busy running the Father/Son tournametn, so I was able to draft players very independently. As a veteran MNTT player, Joe McNay was signed early to my team. To even the strengths of the teams out, another heavy weight player, Bernhard Radtke, was quickly assigned to Larry's team. A fan favourite, Bob Dickie, made a comeback, having not played in a few weeks. As a protege' of Larrys, he of course had to be assigned to Larrys' team. Other regulars were Maria, Andrea, Debbie, Patge, Wallace, Dan, Cindy, Lenny, Peter, Bob, Ken, Bruce, Susan, Paul, JVH, and Lou.

The first round was key to the victory. And victory was sweet. After three weeks of coming in second, my team played very well and finally won again. My team was up 44-28 after the first round of doubles, and won 42 games in the 2nd round against Team Larry's 30 games. In the end, my team won 126-90. For the 3rd round, one of my players had to leave, so I filled in for him. Together with Jeff Z I clinched the victory with an impressive 8-0 win over [first name, last name] and [first name, last name]. (Names erased upon request by the losing team.)

It was a great night for tennis and everyone had fun playing and socializing afterwards. Next week will be tougher when Larry is around for some hands-on coaching again.

Final score MNTT # 5:    Team Larry  90                                        Team Magnus 126

Camp Wolf now accepting donations

Another excellent day for Monday night team tennis. This was the 4th MNTT, and at this point Larry is winning. He has won 3 of the 4, or 75%. Pick your poison. We had 14 courts and 56 players participating. One of the possitives this night was the fact that there was actually some food left for me afterwards on the poarch. Typically it's all gone by the time me and Larry have done the math and counted up the 3 rounds. Tony brought out some good stuff, and I especially enjoyed those crackers with cheese and jam. I had 5!

 

Two other possitives were round 1 and round 2. My team performed very well, going into the lead after the first round and expanded the lead 108 to 94 after round 2. I was sitting pretty watching the matches play out the way I had planned it. But then something happened in the last round. Team Larry surprisingly caught up and actually passed my team! I know exactly what he did, he put in Betsy E in a key match, and she and her partner scored a 7-1 victory on court 12. I have to say, a genius move. A close match on the CH court required my hands on coaching, and I had to walk out and talk to my players. We decided to return the other teams serves XC and then our net player would poach. Well... let me put it this way: it didn't go as planned. My team ended up winning 3 games against the other teams' 5 games.

At the end of the day I felt that if we could have kept the pace up, the Nahirny's could have won a free drink each instead of having to pay for 4 drinks. I feel that Larry was handed some donations in Round 3. And he accepted them.

Final score: Team Larry                                                                   Team Magnus

Monday Night Team Tennis #3

Around 4 PM today Paul asked me how many courts I expected for Monday Night Team Tennis. Thinking that it is the 4th of July week, and that many people go away, I said my guess is 5 to 6 courts. 40 players showed up and we had 10 courts of tennis! Curt, Vicki, Walter, Pam, David, and Carol played in their first MNTT. Welcome!

I was wondering whether Larry would call in from South Dartmouth to check on his team. He and Linda are on a well deserved family reunion break. There were no calls. Hmmm.... he must be communicating with his team somehow. Maybe he just sent some possitive vibes from the So. Dartmouth beaches.

The first round was tight. Larry's team won 33 games vs. Magnus/ 24 games. Going in to Round 2 I said to myself: "I need to stir things up here". So I put the Taffs together, and they got the job done. However, Round 2 ended up in Larry's favor despite the Taffs. For the 3rd round I got desperate, so I had to play my best card: McNay/ Rappaport. They already played together in Round 1, but in this situation I couldn't take any chances. My coaching paid off and McNay/Rappaport won their match, Larry's team however again showed who was the stronger team tonight, and ended up winning also the 3rd round. There must have been some hidden coaching going on after all. I will find out!

Final score: Larry 131                            Magnus 101

Excellent conditions for MNTT

Round 2 Order of Play

A Doubles

If you read the title of this post as "a doubles", you're reading it the worng way. It is supposed to be "A Doubles", and it refers to the Club Championships Men's A Doubles, Women's A Doubles, and Mixed A Doubles. All these 3 divisions were played up to the finals this passed weekend. Two matches on the Friday and one on the Saturday were played on clay, all other matches on grass.

I was lucky to capture the best point in this Men's A doubles match on video. Study the footwork of the receivers partner and tell me how good it is on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best)

It was a beautiful day on Saturday up on the terrace. The Grounds did a fabulous job getting the courts ready after some heavy rain Friday morning. I noticed very early Saturday morning that Grounds Man elite Neil drove the tractor with the 100 year old roller behind it over the courts to firm them up and improve the playing experience for the competitors. Neil was wearing his orange baseball hat, a slight mismatch with the color of the tractor. Tennis Director Wolf brought up water and towels for the players as well as balls and most importantly: the Draws. You have got to know who you are playing, and when.

Tournament Director with The Draws

There were many hard fought matches, and some players ended up playing more than they could chew. Creative stalling techniques to conserve energy between matches and after split sets were indeed observed.

One of the more entertaining matches that I watched was KofolKofol vs. O'SullivanChen. Team O'Chen lost the first set and was up 4-3 in the second when DKofol served a long game that could have gone either way. After several deuces she held to 4-4. Team Kofol then broke, and TKofol served out the match.

As you know, all finals are played on the Championship weekend in September. The Doubles Finals will be played as follow:

Men's A Doubles: Gregor/Porter vs. Ament/Meringoff

Women's A Doubles: Driscoll/O'Sullivan vs. Judge/Lane

Mixed A Doubles: L. Ford/Porter vs. Judge/B. Power

Action on the Terrace

Fans with 1st row tickets

Porter/Ford receiving serve

It was hard to take one picture of all the courts. This is a poor attempt...

Penn's grandfather

One of the most popular tennis balls is the Penn ball. At LCC the Wilson ball is the most popular, and in my opinion, the better ball to play with. Anyhow, I came across a can of Penn's grandfather - the Pennsylvania ball. The color scheme of the can is the same as the Penn ball, and it contained 2 white balls. My guess is that at one point someone in the administrative office said "Pennsylvania is too long. Let's just call it Penn.".