Zack and Robert, winners of the Presidential Cup
"Twere good, I think, your lordship sent him thither:
There shall he practise tilts and tournaments,
Hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen.
And be in eye of every exercise
Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.
-Panthino
Act 1, Scene 3
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Action Central here again last weekend: the fabled President's Cup took place on Saturday and has been officially proclamed the Most Successful President's Cup Tournament in the history of the club. And the Labor Day Extravaganza took place on Monday. A corker.
We have to give Lenny a round of applause here: for the tournament, Len bought the food, set it out in a lavish display, played and provided a zesty ambiance; for Labor Day, Lenny donated and defrosted and trucked the turkey, bought the ice, the beer, and 75 EXTRAORDINARY hotdogs. He played, he yakked.
Joe Cortes harvested players, drew the draw, assigned courts and sometimes partners for the tournament. Joe ran the board for the Labor Day Festival. No easy feat, that.
Thanks Lenny and Joe. Good work. The club worships you.
And the club rocks on:
Cambridge Tennis Club
2009 Club Championships
New Final Schedule
Please note important schedule change!!
September 12 and 13
- Women’s Singles and Men’s Singles
September 26 and 27
- Mixed Doubles
October 3 and 4
- Women’s Doubles and Men’s Doubles
Entry Deadline: Friday 12:00 before the tourney
Format:
- 10-Game Pro Set w/Ad Scoring until Semifinals
- Semifinals and Finals best 2 of 3 sets w/ad
Eligibility:
- Full Time and Wait list members may play
Entries:
- Sign-up Sheets on Club Bulletin Board
- Or Sign up with either Lenny Singer (617-593-5400) or Joe Cortes (617-283-5387)
- If you need a partner let us know
- Draws will be limited to 16 entries!
As Always,
- Food and refreshments will be catered and served by the President himself
- Prizes and names on Club Plaques
And, oh ya, there is a charge of $25 per person for tournament play.
| The next round robin, scheduled for Thursday, September 10, has been canceled due to lack of interest. |
I commend to our members’ attention the Canadian Open, an ATP 1000 event (formerly known as a Masters Event) usually held in mid-August, as part of the run-up to the US Open. Seventeen of the top 20 men competed in Montreal and the quarter finals were populated by the Nos. 1-8 seeds. Although Messrs. Federer and Nadal were knocked out in the quarters, the semis and finals were highly competitive, with Andy Murray taking the cup, known as the Rogers Cup, named after the primary sponsor, a Canadian Cable TV firm. This year, the women competed in Toronto. Next year they will appear in Montreal, with the men going to Toronto.
The stadia in both cities seat about 12,000 people, which is about as many as can be crammed in and still enjoy reasonable proximity to the court. The secondary stadia seat about 5,000 and like the Grandstand at Flushing Meadows, bring one very close to the players.
As Ms. Gauthier can attest, Montreal is a world class city, with as many diversions, amenities and purveyors of haute cuisine as in Boston. The weather tends to be more temperate than in NYC, and the Montreal Metro provides more rapid, less crowded and more pleasant transport to the site than the NYC subway or the LIRR. With 3-4 months foresight, tickets were readily available on-line.
Bon voyage.
Ishmael
SEPTEMBER:
|
We are going to try out a new feature on the newspage. Let's call it The Book Blurb. The Blurb will note books not necessarily about tennis, but authored by CTC members. So, if you members have recently, or maybe not so recently, written a book that you'd like blurbed, please let us know.
Let's start with:
While We Were Sleeping by David Hemenway.
"This book powerfully illuminates how public health works with more than sixty success stories drawn from the area of injury and violence prevention."
The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development by Rick Weissbourd.
The New Yorker review said, "In this ardent and persuasive inquiry, Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist, warns that 'happiness-besotted' parents do children a disservice by emphasizing personal fulfillment over empathy."
Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools by Kay Merseth "an inspirational and practical how-to guide for school reformers."
"sighing every minute and groaning every hour would
detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.
-Rosalind
As You Like It
Act 3, Scene 2
Let's talk about reservations. Let's talk about 8:00, the gunshot that starts the blitzing hour.
We don't have the banks of friendly operators waiting to take your call. We don't have the cesium clock. We have two lines on one phone that, when the hour strikes, is too hot to handle. It burns; it cooks the ear.
Folks want to complain that they called right at 8:00, right on the hour, and their court was already booked. Well, if 10 people call right on the hour, some caller is going to be first, some caller second, and so on.
Let's laugh a little bit here, shall we? One joker dials all the numbers but one and then on the stroke of the hour, hits the last digit. Another dials 30 seconds early and works the answering machine, chatting about the accuracy of his clocks and how eager he is to play until the hour strikes and the staff member picks up the phone. (We are thwarting this joker by turning off the answering machine at 7:55.) We have folks who set their cell phone alarms and speed dial from court 2. We have jokers with automatic continuous re-dial, jokers with secretaries, jokers with tricks, strategies, pleadings, scoldings, tantrums, vituperations.
No one has ever tried a bribe.
The club directory for 2009 should always be at your hand or in your hand. Other than membership listings, all of the information in the book is 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.)
Take a look
The Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2008. 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 (2009). 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/News2009.16.en.html
