“We had you”

“We had you” stated player/captain Vlad Grodecki after our match on Saturday, June 5^th.  Easy Killer was fortunate to get by the Pirates 3-2 in the muggy confines of Great Valley Racquet Club in Malvern, PA.   Elsewhere in our flight Lakeside defeated Haverford so that sets up a battle royale this Saturday, June 12^th at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting, PA at 9am vs. Gulph Mills. 

Team Standings– Click on a Team Name to view the Team Summary

Team Name	Team Wins	Team Losses	Ind. Wins	Ind. Losses	Sets Lost	Games Lost
Easy Killer	5	1	22	8	18	229
Gulph Mills	5	1	18	12	27	287
Pirates	4	3	22	13	31	308
Haverford	3	3	17	13	31	311
Lakeside	2	4	12	18	39	338
Fit Hits	0	7	4	31	64	418

If we are fortunate to win next Saturday we should be on auto-pilot for Districts but if the crafty Gulph Mills guys defeat us; everything will be up for grabs in our flight.  Our shirts with our custom logo came in.  Thank you Larkin Werner, my college roommate for the art work.  We appreciate it.

At #1 singles, Mike Kane played Matt Siggs.  Matt looks to be a superb player with big strokes but from what I heard he hasn’t been playing much tennis since graduating High School last year.  I also heard that if he wasn’t rusty we would have lost the court – guess we dodged a bullet here.

At #2 singles, Forrest Patterson avenged his loss to us earlier in the season by dialing it up against our previously unbeaten singles ace Mitch Reading.  Forrest is ultra steady and fast and he was simply on against Mitch.  Good win Forrest.

At #1 dubs, Ron Rubenstein and I faced Ron Bressler and Gene Kim.  Personally I felt like we didn’t play our best.  We made far too many errors and trailed the whole match.  We lost the first set 1-6 but won the second set 6-3. We were down 1-4 in the 3^rd set but then got it back on serve at 4-5. And then, we got broke and that was that.  Ron and Gene are great players who have had a lot of success this season so it’s simply a matter of saying, “congrats guys – well done.”  Well publically at least, privately I think what I said was ”%^$@%%^$^##%$$&*(&&**(!! Crap!”

At #2 dubs, what an awesome matchup.  Mel Navea and Victor Fissella took on Vlad Grodecki and Dan Remillard.  I’m not sure who I thought would win when we exchanged lineups – I just knew it would be close.  We lost the first set 4-6 and Vlad and Dan looked very effective.  They had a few break points in the 2^nd and 3^rd set they didn’t capitalize on and ultimately we won the last two sets by breaking at 5-4 in the 3^rd set for the victory.  And, this was the pivotal individual match of the contest.  Vlad may have been right in that they had us but thanks to Mel & Victor for a fantastic performance we won this court and there was never a more important court to win.

Well OK, almost as important of a win as 3^rd dubs.  Playing last (Great Valley Racquet has 4 courts) with the team match tied 2-2 was Rob Laiacona and Hap Phounghavonsa taking on Ron Siggs (Matt’s Dad) and Kurt Foehl.  Rob & Hap had not met previously but I was quite sure they would gel.  Rob works a lot of hours and Hap lives South of Wilmington, DE so there isn’t tons of opportunity for them to play together in practices.  They are both playing great tennis and in my opinion they couldn’t have played any better winning 3&2 to close out a very tough Pirates team.

We’re getting closer gents – 4 more matches to go.