Did somebody say the word 'flood?'
"I definitely feel there's room for improvement."
-Roger Federer
We bumped into a former member who quit our little club a few years ago. He plays now at Longwood and at the B and T. He asked was the CTC still open? Still open? We beg your pardon. Yes, we're still open. The club is open until November 11 this year. But the courts are a bit wet. How's Longwood? we asked.
The club's only tournament, Mixed Doubles is on the schedule for this Saturday and Sunday. There are 16, count 'em, 16 teams. Right now all of the courts are blocked off for the tournament on both Saturday and Sunday. As the matches are scheduled, we'll free up courts and accept reservations. Weather permitting, we'll also have the belated Columbus Day Barbecue, now dubbed the Mixed Doubles Barbecue. The club will offer beer and tonic and burgers and dogs and all the fixings to competitors and the audience and the complainers (I can't play? there's some tournament? I'll write a bristling e to the club. I just...) The tennis committee and the club pro, Rick Rose, are working hard on making the tournament happen and keeping everyone happy. That's their plan: lots of tournament, lots of happiness. We might be washed out. We might sit on the club roof and watch the club wash a-way. Somebody save the sign-in sheet so I won't be fined.
Columbus Day? The cook-out? We had a party for, maybe, 14 folks who brought some tasty dishes and ate and chatted and hung out. It was informally and unofficially decided that when you come to the word 'compelling' or 'luminous' in a book review, you don't have to finish the review nor do you have to read the book.
The club has a renegade member who does not drive a Saab or Volvo, but drives instead:
Note on the last newspage: Lucy Fowler once said that the common ingredient in club members was not, as in some clubs, wealth, but rather, education. Well, our last newspage, we misquoted Tennyson and, sure enough, we heard about our "egregious" mistake. Ya gotta love it. We love it.
"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. Bettern't we?)
Take a look
Some useful links:
And 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.
The club book, right now, should be right by your hand. The website also has up-to-date info. The Rules section, the Governors and Committees and Activities (tournaments, round robins, etc) sections are current for 2005. Also, the Waiting List (which is not featured in the book) is current and ordered on the website. (The Waiting List and the list of New Members can be accessed through the FAQ page.) We thank the committee heads for making the information available in such a timely fashion and we urge all public spirited readers to proof-read.
'Members', and' Reservation Requests' are not active parts of the site nowadays. 'Timelines' is for adepts.
We'll keep the tournament draws available on-line (including all of the results), thanks to the Java Kid:
And the previous tournaments:
|
Tournaments |
|
And here's the saga of 2002's tournaments (so's we can compare and contrast):
And the saga of the year before (we're mighty fancy here, and mighty grateful to the Java Kid for doing all this work):
Phew.
The Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2004. From there you can see the whole of the Persistant 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 you can read the news pages for the whole year (2004). The less-than link (<) next to the honeycomb icon will take you to the last issue of the newspage.
