Barbara is playing a lot.
You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,
Come hither from the furrow and be merry:
Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on
-Iris
The Tempest
August is not the cruellest, or busiest month. August is not the slowest month either, but we are having a bit of a lull before the September storm of busyness. (September is our second busiest month.) Right now you can get a court almost any old time except 7:00 a.m. at which time we would need 8 or 10 courts to satisfy the early morning players. (And a rowdy, energetic bunch you are.) And at 7, we need loaner rackets and lemonade and the ball machine, (Bless the ball machine. Bless its merry users.), and coffee. We don't lack playmates.
Alert: If you park your car on Mt. Auburn St. in the evening or, even worse, overnight, you risk having your windshield smashed and your car looted. A CTC member, playing in the last round robin, was a recent victim. And we notice, of a morning, some shattered windshields. The street there is between parks. (No one can hear your windshield shatter, and, at night, there are few passers-by.)
And we have a report from one of our favorite correspondents: Ishmael checks in with the news from Montreal.
OK folks, the Rogers Cup is really the Canadian Open, one of the nine Masters Series events each year, where the prize money and the TV exposure, and maybe even the ATP rules induce the top pro players to show up. The PR folks said the top 20 ranked male players were in Montreal last week, and for New Englanders, this is a better deal than the US Open.
The main show court seats 12,000, rather than the 25,000 in NYC. Access is easy on the Metro – twenty minutes from Old Montreal, and the organizers provide free Metro passes to encourage the use of the Metro. The surface is the same as that of the US Open. Canadians are somewhat more polite than New Yorkers. The crowds are smaller, the concession food is less extortionately priced and far more edible. The ticket prices are about half of those in NYC. Roger Federer speaks excellent French, and although Novak Djokovic ( a Serb, not a Croat, notwithstanding the announcer’s error) responded in English, the crowd is fully bilingual and received them both warmly. CTC members will also be relieved to note a refreshing absence of NYY baseball caps. The weather is likely to be cooler and more pleasant than NYC over Labor Day.
N.B., the Canadian Open, perhaps as a concession to cultural rivalry, stages the men’s and women’s tournaments in rotation in Toronto and Montreal, so this year the women are in Toronto, starting this week. Next year the women will be in Montreal and the men in Toronto. The drive to Montreal is about 5.5 hours, but currently there are delays crossing the border, both ways. Flying may be preferable.
Montreal is full of interesting architecture, a handsome late 18th - early 19th century commercial district, now transformed into tourist central, excellent restaurants, a decent fine arts museum and polite and helpful residents. Their newspapers put the Boston Globe to shame – not so difficult these days. Montreal’s history is fascinating – it was occupied briefly by the Americans during the Revolution and visited by Ben Franklin as an official emissary. In the 1830s -40s, the French, Patriote party seeking self government, led an armed rebellion against the Brits, which was suppressed by regular troops with significant bloodshed. The subsequent arrangement between the conservative Catholic Church and the British governing elite brought stability, but at a considerable price. The economy was dominated by a Scots commercial elite, leading to resentment among the majority French-Canadians and eventually the secessionist movement. The city seems to have moved beyond its historical divisions, and to have found a steady, cosmopolitan and prosperous modus vivendi. It is a center for immigrants, e.g. 23,000 Bangla Deshis were raising money this weekend to aid their flood stricken relatives in the former East Pakistan. Haitian émigrés too find a congenial Francophone home. Visit Montreal, you‘ll like it.
| The next Round Robin is scheduled for Thursday, August 30. The meal will be catered. |
The staff kindly requests that members observe the rules regarding advance reservations. (Advance reservations may be made from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and again from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) Please don't try to trick the staff, or cajole, confuse, or conjure the staff into giving you an advance reservation at, say, 7:59.99999. No heart breaking stories, please. (My llama is sick. I have to rush her to... I can't wait 'til eight. My Volvo just blew up. I have to save my children. My Golden Retriever just...)
The old house clock was triangulated to the mighty atomic clock in Berne and the Great Cartesian Grid Clock in Oblivia, but now in 2007, we are even more accurate: we use our cell phones and Lennie Singer's cell phone. Lennie's is state of the art. It is something to behold. It just radiates precision. Reservations are not taken until the 8:00 a.m. flashes across the face of what are possibly the most precise timepieces on the planet (and perhaps beyond).
The 'dedicated' court? The club is trying something new this year: a court dedicated all day for the use of the pros. Court 3, usually. The idea is that you members can come to the club any old time and find a pro or a hitting partner and a court and perfect your tennis. The dedicated court is released if no pro has reserved it by 8:00 a.m. the day before. Capiche? (You want a court for 6:00 on Tuesday and they're all booked except for the dedicated court? Call at 8:00 a.m. on Monday. Be happy.)
Please take a look at the new schedule of clinics. This year the club is offering a number of clinics that we haven't had before, some with our new assistant pros.
William Gibson, of Neuromancer fame, said that the future is already here, but that it isn't evenly distributed. CTC has its share: a wireless router. So, if you have a wireless card on your laptop and you want to go somewhere, check with the staff about our password and send your avatar off on adventures.
In case you haven't noticed, we've added some features to the website. Check 'em out.
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.)
Take a look
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.
Webmaster, is on vacation again. If there should be any dire website issue, an unimaginable breach, please contact the website's father,
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. (Skywriter is for Initiates.)
