The Cavalry Arrives!

"I pity the Fools!"

As strong as the season has started for the Great Valley 4.0 squad, there's been something missing. The tennis has been excellent, the comraderie quite good...what has it been? Oh yeah, now I remember. The warpaint! Our favorite bandana-ed, warpainted team member has re-emerged from his Florida winter hideout to help us in our push towards Princeton and beyond, and he made an impact in his first match back on Saturday morning.

Phoenixville High School was the setting, on another beautiful Saturday morning for tennis. Scattered clouds, high 70's, little humidity. Can we dial that up for the rest of the season? Great Valley brought a strong lineup to face the Drunken Fools, who sent out a formidable lineup of their own. Let's go to the match-by-match review.

#1 Singles - Brett Siegfried (5-0, singles) d. Shawn Minnier (4-4, singles), 6-4, 7-5

Brett Siegfried is, quite frankly, on a roll. We'll disregard any Thursday night tune-up matches and just pay attention to his spotless USTA record - our singles anchor has only dropped 1 set in 5 matches this year, including one CPD match. He faced Shawn Minnier, who gave Great Valley fits last year (he was 9-1 in singles last year in PATD 4.0 action!) but has struggled this year. Shawn struggled versus yours truly in Week 1, but has done a nice job in Delaware action this year, with a 3-1 record down south. Anyway, this looked like a very competitive match from our court. Shawn was hitting crisp groundstrokes, but you just can't outlast Brett right now. Ultimately Shawn just didn't have enough, and Brett pulled out yet another victory. By the way (and I hope the USTA computers aren't reading this), Brett is 19-3 in his last 22 USTA singles matches, including playoffs last year (Districts, Sectionals AND Nationals). Pretty darned impressive.

#2 Singles - Dave Umbach (1-0, singles) d. Jeffrey Horwitz (0-3, singles), 7-5, 6-3

As I alluded to in the intro, the warpaint is back! Dave made is back in time for practice on Wednesday night, where it was determined that he was not exactly ready to resume doubles play with 2008 partner Rich Trach. Actually, looking back at their 2008 results, Dave and Rich had a fascinating run. 0-1 in the regular season (a 3-set loss to the Chambermaids and Hos), they went 7-0 in the playoffs between Districts and Sectionals. But the fascinating part is that 5 of those matches went to the 10-point 3rd set tiebreak, and Dave and Rich won all 5. Dave also managed a 4-0 singles record last year, including a match against his 5/30 opponent Jeff Horwitz. So when Jeff jumped to a 5-2, 40-Love lead in the first set, he had to know that Dave had him just where he wanted him. Sure enough, Mr. Umbach pulled out the first set despite the early difficulties, and cruised the rest of the way to a comfortable straight set victory. Dave's return gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility going forward, hopefully deep into the playoffs.

#1 Doubles - Heck (1-0, singles, 4-0, doubles)/Trach (4-0, doubles) d. Cooper (2-1, doubles)/Ruhl (3-1, doubles), 7-5, 5-7, 6-4

My third straight match with Rich Trach saw our first real bit of adversity as we dropped the second set before closing out the match against two tough opponents. I couldn't look at Lonnie Cooper without thinking of "Bruiser" from Ocean's Eleven. Not sure if anyone will get that reference, but that's not really my problem. Anyway, Rich and I played a fairly uneven match, mostly because of my service problems and our inability to put balls away. We had some fabulous net points, and it really was a fun doubles match to be a part of. That said, I know that I personally have to do a better job of ending points quicker, because we kept them in a lot of points that should have been over early. As Russell mentioned in his blog last week, Rich is a fantastic singles player who has made a seamless transition to doubles. It's great for our team to have so much versatility between singles and doubles.

#2 Doubles - Schmidt (2-1 singles, 1-0 doubles)/Mackenthun (5-0 doubles) d. Potts (1-0 singles, 1-1 doubles)/Flemming (1-3 doubles), 6-3, 2-6, 7-5

The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming! Holger Mackenthun, who's played with everyone but Bobby Riggs this year, found himself with a new partner and countryman to face the Drunken Fools' young combo of Potts & Flemming in this barnburner of a match. Michael Schmidt was bumped down to 2nd dubs because of Dave Umbach's return (giving us tremendous depth), and the Germans found themselves face-to-face with two kids whose combined ages were probably less than the average age of a player on our team! This was a back-and-forth affair, much fist-pumping from the young Fools duo, much solid tennis from our boys. In the end, the veterans got it done, holding on for a 3-set victory. Holger has now had 4 different partners in 5 weeks...and is yet to drop a match. He even carried Kenny to a victory! Many candidates for team MVP this year - Holger has to be high on the list.

#3 Doubles - Gionta (1-1 doubles)/Cantu (0-2 doubles) v. Pattinson (2-2 doubles)/Dixon (1-2 doubles), 6-7, 3-6

Two of our ailing warriors, "Wey Cool" Gionta and "Hammer" Cantu fell in a hard-fought match with their Drunken Fools counterparts in the final match of the day. Gionta and Cantu couldn't recover from dropping the 1st set tiebreak, as both are rounding back into match condition after injuries have slowed their 2009 campaigns. Getting on the court is the best medicine, and both players expect a strong second half to prepare for the playoffs.

So there we are. 5-0, two game lead over both Easy Killer (who scraped by Kinetix 3-2 this weekend) and the West Chester Aces (5-0 victors over doormat Healthplex). Our "magic number" is technically 4, but we can put an absolute choke hold on the subflight with a victory this weekend against the West Chester Aces, the only squad we haven't faced. The Aces beat Easy Killer early in the season, but have since lost to the Fools and Kinetix, so I'm not quite sure what to expect. Let's bring our "A" games, just in case.

By the way, the link to Russell's blog is now on the right side above the link the USTA standings, for those interested in keeping track of our chief rivals. Enjoy!

-g

The Great Wide Open

Mission accomplished. Don't get me wrong - there's still plenty of tennis left. But we find ourselves in rare air here, after our victory over Easy Killer on a picturesque Memorial Day weekend. I think you'll be hard pressed to find another sub-flight where the leaders have a 2 match lead in the loss column over the entire field this early in the season. Our win and the West Chester Aces' loss to Kinetix leaves 4 teams at 2 losses, fighting for second place. Unfortunately for them, the PATD Men's 4.0 Red Subflight is a lot like Top Gun - no points for second-best.

At first singles, EK's Cahn Ho (a true USTA league tennis veteran) out-grunted and outlasted Michael Schmidt 6-4, 6-4. Hey, someone tell Mike that he doesn't need to worry about his rating getting bumped since he's going back to Germany at the end of the Summer! Seriously, looked like a fierce match from where I was, Cahn is such a tough out.

Second singles featured Brett "Giant Killer" Siegfried against EK's...well...giant, the young Tom McAvoy. Hammer and I played Tom and a partner in dubs last year, lost badly in the first set before coming back to dominate the rest of the match. Flash forward to last Saturday, where Brett lost badly in the first set (Tom's huge serve can take some getting used to) before coming back to dominate the rest of the match, final of 1-6, 6-0, 6-2. If I recall, Tom's kind of a one-trick pony, and once Brett was able to turn the momentum, he never gave it back. Huge win for Brett and turned out to be the deciding court.

First doubles paired EK's Ron Rubenstein and Russell "Chambermaid" Chamberlin against myself and Rich Trach. Rich and I played together for the second consecutive week, and had all of our weapons firing...until we led 6-2, 5-2 and dropped the next 4 games. Whoops. We rallied to break Russell's serve and force the tiebreak, which we pulled out 7-5. Aside from that 10 minute lapse, I felt that Rich and I played a strong match and we certainly made an impression on Russell based on his blog entry (which you can read for yourself - modesty prevents me from posting here!)

Second doubles featured a dominant performance by peace-loving German Holger Mackenthun and new favorite partner Tom Mead, rolling their EK opponents 6-4, 6-2 in a match that was never in doubt. Even though these guys were right next to us, I didn't catch much of their match as I was admittedly watching Brett's match during our downtime. Tom and Holger have had two very impressive performances thus far, and we need them to keep that going. And Holger - they might have been "nice guys", but they would have stepped on our throats for a win in this match...don't forget that!

At third doubles, Jim Dare and Tom "Hammer" Cantu fell 7-6, 6-3. This was Tommy's first appearance this year as he's knocking the rust off from an elbow injury. This match got a little heated in the late-going as one of the "Easy Killers" admonished Jim Dare for having the temerity to move his feet during an EK serve. Um, really? Not surprisingly, the EK player's mood improved after the win, but there might be a little bad blood leading into the next match. A little "chin music", anyone?

So, we got the job done. No letdowns now, as the Drunken Fools lie in wait to try to knock us down a peg on Saturday. Let's keep our feet on the throttle and clinch this thing as early as possible. No prisoners!

Opportunity Knocks

So, fellas, here we are. Remember last season? We dropped the first week, and had to work like hell to make up the ground, careful not to even drop any extra courts because that could be the difference at the end of the season? Never any breathing room? Well, it worked out...we blitzed our way through the rest of the year undefeated, moved to districts by virtue of our superior court-by-court record, and the rest was history.

Well, we have ourselves a unique opportunity a mere 4 weeks into this season. Everyone around us has at least one loss already. After Easy Killer's shocking Week 3 loss to the West Chester Aces, the Aces went and got smoked by the Drunken Fools last week, who had already lost twice. Kinetix looked like a contender after beating the Fools in Week 3...but we exposed them as frauds last week. So despite my Week 4 declaration that the order of things had changed...it would appear that I spoke too soon.

Anyway, the bottom line is this: we defend our home court on Saturday morning and send Easy Killer to their second loss, and we have bought ourselves one helluva lot of breathing room. Our destiny would be completely in our hands, and Easy Killer would be effectively dismissed from the conversation.

That said, we must not take them lightly, despite Russel's "woe-is-me" e-mail from earlier in the week. Don't buy for a second that they won't be showing up with their "A" team, and a loss this weekend puts us right back to where we were last year - each week as a must-win. So let's take care of business - I pledge to show up at least 5 minutes early this week to show my dedication to putting away our closest rivals!

Chambermaids (aka Easy Killers) Getting Frustrated

Hey Guys,

First wanted to thank Greg for keeping up w/ the blog, hope everyone is reading it. Below is an e-mail from Russ Chamberlin (Capt if the Easy Killers) to me after I asked him how they lost to the WC Aces. Looks like there could be some decention amoung the ranks. We need everyone available this w/e for the Easy Killers so we can put the final nail in their coffin w/ a win this Sat. Maybe they should call themselves Easy to Kill instead (LOL).


Note From Russ:

Mike,

We lost because we haven't been practicing and as usual the majority of the team was unavilable. I freaked out on the team and this week we had 5 at practice and 7 available for our Healthplex match this weekend. The short answer is "congratulations GV on making Districts!"

Seriously, you have a great team and we don't. And, since we really aren't in the running this year, we do want to play 5/23. We actually have enough players for once this year for that weekend (and no not out best) and we already have a Durnken Fools match to make up so it's unrealistic to think I can get my guys out without it being a total nightmare.

So, we'll see you at 9am at GV.


Regards,

Russell

New World Order

Once upon a time, there was an order to things. Last year, there were three haves in our PATD 4.0 Men's Subflight - Great Valley, the Chambermaids and Hos, and the Drunken Fools. The other three teams went oh-for-the season against the three haves, so we had six weeks of tuneups and 4 weeks that decided the regular season.

Those days are no more, my friends. As Capt. Mike alluded to in his weekend review e-mail, the subflight has been turned on its head after last week's results. Easy Killers (formerly the Chambermaids and Hos) falling to the West Chester Aces? The Drunken Fools dropping a 3-2 decision to Kinetix? What in God's name is going on here?

The upshot here is this - no more weeks off this year, aside from our other match with Healthplex, I suppose. Maybe next time they can get FOUR guys to show up. But I digress. We have back-to-back big matches against Kinetix and Easy Killer (though we'll see if the Memorial Day weekend match gets postponed, I'm hoping so). It's imperative that we stave off the other competition while working towards our matches with the West Chester Aces...last year showed that there can be very little room for error if we want to get back to the postseason.

Tuneup at GVHS tomorrow as always. Big one against Kinetix on Saturday. Let's remind everyone that this subflight goes through Great Valley.

Week 3 - Death Wish?

Healthplex has chosen to play us at Great Valley. Don't they realize that we've won our last 6 matches at home? (Practically 7, I mean we have a 2-1 lead in the first set on Court 1 against the WC Aces...might as well chalk that one up too!) The big question is, will the weather improve in time? Here's what I'm seeing for Saturday...

Saturday
Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers or thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

I don't know. The nationwide doppler radar shows patches of green all over the map. I have a bad feeling that we may be looking at another washout...but I'm going to limit myself to 6 beers tomorrow night just in case! :-)

-g

Rain Out Match Info from the May 2nd Match from the infamous Sally Baird:


From: Mike Gionta [mailto:M102G@Comcast.net] Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 2:02 PMTo: Baird, SallyCc: Ken Werkiser; Al OrtegaSubject: Match Rain Out QuestionHi Sally,Mike Gionta here. Have a line up question on a rain-out match this past w/e. We attempted to play our match against the WC Aces on Sat at 9 AM as scheduled. Both teams showed up, we exchanged line ups, and tried to get the courts dry enough to play. One court had started playing and were on serve at 2-1 and the other courts had started warming up when it started to rain again so we were forced to cancel the match.The question is since we exchanged line ups do we have to keep the same guys for the make up match and at the same positions or do we just start over like a new match?

Sally's Response:


The guys who started their court have to finish that court.
Since none of the other courts started, you can change all of the
people.
Sally Baird
Director of Adult Competition
USTA Middle States Section
1288 Valley Forge Road
P. O. Box 987, Suite 74
Valley Forge, PA 19482
610-935-5000, ext. 227
610-935-5484 (FAX)

Week 2 VS WC Aces

Capt Mike here. Against my better judgement I followed the WC Aces Capt's advice and we had our team show up. Jack L. was the star of the day w/ his little leaf blower, he puffed and puffed and puffed until all 5 courts were almost dry. But soon after, it started to rain and the match was cancelled. Good news, Brett had started and was up 2-1. everyone else was in warm-up mode and down came the rain.

Practice will be Wed 5-5:30 depending on the weather.

Hope to see everyone than.

Capt Mike

Week 2

9 AM, GVHS vs. the 1-0 West Chester Aces.

I won't be there - I look forward to everyone's updates on the action...if there is any action. Weather report is still looking bleak.

Go get 'em, boys!