We were treated to a first viewing of the club's youngest player, Audrey, with David and Michelle.
"What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
The Memorial Day Party was somewhat out of control, we thought: players, many of them, ate too much and drank too much and played way too much. (We ate 2 turkeys, 48 hamburgers, 40 hot dogs (not counting the special hot dogs (you have to know someone to get one of those), and 672 brownies. We drank every beer and soda. Some folks played from 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon.) Many players also made too much noise and laughed too much. Let's watch it next time. And let's all wear whites. We are also considering imposing a limit on burger consumption, let's say 25 burgers apiece? Seems reasonable.
We had a big hungry, athletic crowd.
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The club is holding two (2) massive tournaments this weekend: A Member-Guest Mixed Doubles Tournament on Saturday, and a Parent-Child Tournament on Sunday (in a "non-traditional format" (say what?)) Ringers are welcome. Pros are not. We'll have some food and drink. We anticipate a romp. A hoot. |
"Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second."
-Don DeLlllo
Underworld
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 is on its way to you. This year's Events and Rules available on the website now.
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/News2009.9.en.html
