"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
Sonnet 73
"Had all residual music gone with the quick birds, or was there a waltz we'd only now dreamed?"
Thomas Pynchon
V
The season ended on the eleventh, a cold day. The season was rich and good and we'll keep some little glimmer of it in our memories as we slide into the crepuscular months.
As usual, the website stays alive during the off-season, the links and so on. The archive stays active.
The Annual Meeting and Opening Party usually takes place on the first Monday in March. The newsroom staff will perk up a bit before that and we'll post any info that comes our way.
There are folks at the club who helped make the season a rockin' good time, and we'd like to thank those folks. Lennie did a lot to keep things moving and we appreciate him. And Phil is there to care. Thanks also to our tech pals, Bob Doyle and the gang over there at skyBuilders, who support and encourage us. And thanks to our contributors for photos and comments and suggestions. And thanks to our readers
(We are still soliciting comments on the newspage, the website, the club, the season, for this, our last newspage. Please send 'em along.)
Here's a riff from Craig to close the season:
Late Autumn Tennis
by Craig Lambert
It was dark, it was cold, it was a mid-November night, just two weeks before Thanksgiving. Yet we were out on court #1 for some mixed doubles. The guys hitting singles next to us departed by about 6:30 P.M., leaving our foursome as the only survivors of the 2008 tennis season, the last group standing. Yes, Kate Canfield, Mary Tittmann, Joe DeBassio, and I were playing the final match of the year at Cambridge Tennis Club. We were the closing act, the swan song, the final curtain. We were playing out the last points of a season that saw thousands of points come before us.
Sure, we had no light but the manmade kind, and the temperature was in the 40s. (The NCAA lets college teams move outdoor matches onto indoor courts, if available, when the temperature drops below 50.) Mary’s hands kept freezing up (gloves work for golf but not tennis) and Kate wore earmuffs. Sweatpants all around, and some of us wore layers above the belt. Well, there was no wind, and in many ways the playing conditions were ideal, as long as you don’t mind freezing in the dark.
Yet we had a ton of fun and played some damn good tennis. Joe served even better than his usual high standard. His partner Mary lobbed nearly flawlessly and was her usual steady self off the ground. Kate unleashed a flow of nasty service returns and wicked backhands. I don’t think I missed a volley in two hours of play. One game, I held serve despite two double faults—the key is to compensate with three aces and a service winner. Two sets, both close, with Kate and I squeaking out wins both times Easily could have gone the other way. Finally, three hours after sundown, Kate banged a groundie that Mary hit into the net: game, set, and match.
There were times when the ball rolled onto not a leaf, but into a pile of fallen leaves in the corner. We did a lot of running—the footwork was excellent—because the alternative was freezing. We had a lot of laughs. And there is nothing quite like looking up at your service toss against a black November sky, a fortnight before Thanksgiving.
The club book should be in your hands by now. Much of the information in the book is updated and available on the website.
Some useful links:
Here's a link to the espn site, with pro ranking.
And a club member (let's call him Sol) suggested a link to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. The site is rich.
We still have the tournament draws (from 2001 to 2004) available on-line (including all of the results), thanks to the Java Kid. We are re-locating the links, however.
"On the court, tennis players exchange not only ground strokes but lots of information. It's a richly interactive sport, both verbally and non-verbally. If players communicate clearly, simply, and consistently, the game will proceed more quickly, and with less fuss and misunderstanding. Here are a few guidelines that can make the game more fun, friendly, and fair for all...."
We've had some requests to run Craig Lambert's piece, sampled above, on Tennis Communication. (We'd better leave this link up on the newspage permanently.)
Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2006. From there you can see the whole of the Persistent Archive of last year's news.
Website Note: The time and temperature icon below is a link to a Boston weather site.
Joe DeBassio, Webmaster.
Website Note II: The honey-comb icon is also a link. It takes the clicker to an archive of all the past news pages so that said clicker can read the news pages for the whole year (2006). The less-than link (<) next to the honeycomb icon will take clickers to the previous issue of this year's newspage.
This version is archived at: https://www.cambridgetennisclub.com/News/News2008.32.en.html
