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!