C&H win twice this weekend but may not advance

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.  It was the time of second guessing our lineups and we came up short.  We needed to sweep all of our individual matches this weekend to make up the difference with first place Great Valley.  GV is ahead of us in individual courts by 3 now.

Our team won this weekend 3-2 over the Drunken Fools on Saturday and it was Chambermaids & Ho’s 4 – the Scottish Highlanders 1 on Sunday. Two of our wins at singles were in straight sets by Jesse Brown.

Never have I been so depressed with our team having won twice in a weekend – we now find ourselves on the brink of elimination from the opportunity to go to Districts unless the Drunken Fools can defeat Great Valley next week.  A manly bunch those Drunken Fools – Adonis’s if you will.  Men among men – champions at heart and recent Local league champions too – How I admire their skills…  Our coaches, nutritionists and chauffeurs will be in touch this week to help out any way possible.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…

Back to my lineup decisions.  Saturday against the Drunken Fools we put together our best pair (Canh Ho and Tom McAvoy) at #1 dubs in the hopes of taking down the #1 team of our opponents – Andreas Schuschke and Joe Dixon.  The problem was that Andreas and Joe played #2 on Saturday.  At #2  we had Eric Markowitz and Tom Faith.  Anyone who has ever heard of our team knows of them.  They were 12-1 lifetime in the regular season coming into this match and they have a winning post season record.  Reunited for the first time this year they were up 6-2, 5-4 against what I consider the best 4.0 duo in the PATD this year (Andreas and Joe) before succumbing in 3 sets.  It was a valiant effort.  No shame guys – one heck of a fight.

The other court we

 dropped was a great effort by Shawn Minnier who is a rapidly improving player who avenged his only loss of the season to Chris Kyper.  This was a three and a half hour battle with many long points but also aggressive play full of clean winners.  Clearly we would like to have won this court but again you just have to tip your hat to your opponent sometimes and say great tennis.

Eric Markowitz (a.k.a. Uncle Ian) has produced outstanding results this year as always and Tom Faith has more natural talent than any partner I’ve had the privilege to play with.  The lineup mistake I made was on Sunday against Tennis Addiction by playing myself with Tom at #1 instead of playing Tom with Eric.  Tom and I won a tournament this year but our success in USTA matches has been limited.  My bad for separating the traditional pairing and it says a lot for the parity and level of play in our flight.  Our opponents, the Athens of the Tennis Addiction outplayed us plain and simple to a 6-4 victory in the 3rd set.  Pure dead brilliant play from Neil Hebenton and John Lonsdale who watched us go Doolally.

Let me digress for a moment.  I have been impressed with many players over the years.  Pete Blok, Ed Hughes/Vince Campisciano, and Melinda Lee to name a few.  All of these players have had much success at 4.0, moved up and have has the same success at the next level.  Genius me, I figured I’d add my name to the list. I really want to be a great player but I seem to have forgotten one piece of the puzzle.  Now what could that be?  Hmmm, let me think, not sure, ahhh, hmmmm, talent – yeah that’s the ticket, talent.  I lack talent.  I would like to say I got the girl, wrote the novel, and won the match but this Casey struck out.   So what is the moral of the story?  Keep our heads up?  Enjoy the journey as that is the real reward?  If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.  Enjoy your achievements, your goals and your friends.  I am so proud of this team and Districts or not, nothing can take away the fond memories of our 8-1 season.  Lets just hope it’s not over next week.