Monday, June 16, 2014

Go West, Young Man! Or why sectionals are not necessarily your manifest destiny

 


FORT WORTH CITY PLAYOFFS - PICTURED ABOVE

According to the world-wide web (an Al Gore creation), historian Frederick Merk says the concept of Manifest Destiny was born out of “a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example”.  Pretty heavy stuff for a tennis blog, but something of this nature played out in Fort Worth a few days ago with their city playoffs in full swing.  Marc Rossouw brought his vision of the USTA to battle the Old World represented by Joel Pickett (without you know who).   While I never envisioned a recap of Fort Worth city playoffs on this blog, or a recap of FW anything quite frankly, when most all of Dallas’ best 4.5s are playing in one place it probably deserves some attention.
Unfortunately, it never came to pass.  They did play, and Pickett won (sort of), but it was all made pretty anti-climactic by the fact that Rossouw’s troops had already lost.  In the first match Pickett’s team swept Southlake/Peterson at 9:30am.  Minutes later the 11:00am match takes the court and Rossouw’s team falls in a tight 3-2 loss to Walnut Creek with a three setter at #2 singles swinging the match.  Pickett then took the court and swept Walnut Creek with only one close match.  Bad luck for Walnut Creek having to play back-to-back matches.  They had to change out their singles guys and bring in a few fresh legs.  While they didn’t have the 50 man rosters of Pickett and Rossouw, they did have 17 guys but it doesn’t mean you want to go 17 deep. 

By the time the big showdown came about, it was both teams’ last match and the table was set.  With Pickett sitting at 2-0 and 10-0 and Rossouw sitting at 1-1 and 6-4, Rossouw needed a sweep to win cities.  Interestingly, it seems Rossouw won the battle but lost the war.  While the results show a 3-2 win by Pickett’s crew, it should have been the opposite.  Pickett took two quick doubles lines, which locked up the cities team win, but Wright retired for Rossouw’s crew up 6-2, 5-3 providing Pickett with a decisive third line. 

There’s still Dallas 18s.  Currently Greenhill is in a dead heat with BH/Goswami.  Both are tied at 6-1 (25-10) so the new head-to-head tie-breaker is currently in play with Marc’s GH squad having beaten BH on a DQ overturning one of BH’s wins in that match.  Shouldn’t matter as GH has last place SpringPark as its last match.  Half of the SP team are 4.0s so a sweep by GH would lock up their spot.  Flight C has Brookhaven/Harlee and Village Warren both tied at 6-1 currently, but I think the team to watch is the JCC/Reiman squad in Flight A.  They are very deep and very talented but they still need to get by second place Oak Creek.  They’ll need to be deep as several of their guys played on Pickett’s FW squad in cities so they’ll be frozen out of playing in Dallas cities.  Might be just enough to throw it Greenhill’s way.

On a side note, I was a little surprised a couple of weeks ago to hear that Canyon Creek’s 8.0 over 40s mixed team was swept at sectionals by Fort Worth, effectively keeping CC from advancing even though they beat the flight winner.  Then when I was doing my FW homework I saw that many of the same FW guys won the 4.0 playoffs there.  Don’t know any of them but they must know a little something about tennis.

This last week of 4.5 will be an exciting finish with all three flights pretty tight.  MOW is first place JCC versus second place Oak Creek in flight A.  Secretly I'm hoping there is a Pickett - Rossouw rematch at sectionals.  It makes for easy blogging.  Good luck to all.

38 comments:

  1. Village in Flight C has a three line lead over BH but BH has a guaranteed sweep over High Point/Le so Village needs to take care of business.

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  2. Those FW 4.0s are extremely good in the 55s. How could the CCers embarrass Dallas with guys who chew geritol 3 times a day.

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    1. Good point, FW 4.0s have been pretty dominant at sectionals the last few years

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  3. Cc was given a gift by a tanking Kelley in cities and shouldn't of been there anyway. Cc mixed has won nothing and you expect them to win sectionals??? The only reason they were there is Springpark taking the year off. Cc men have won nothing. Winning at mixed not as easy as Kelley makes it look. Ask cc men how easy it is... Lol

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  4. A Puckett and Russo rematch ends the same way- w Pickett winning

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  5. Greenhill will win Dallas bec there is no Kelley and there is no Thickett to beat.

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    1. GH will get embarrassed I Dallas too. He needs to realize it is QUALITY not QUANTITY. With the new move up/split up clusterfuck, if Pickett gets to Nats and a Rossouw gets there at 40s, there won't be a clean 4.5 team in Dallas.

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  6. We even took your best mixed player. He has Cowtown buzzing w excitement. Hopefully he will stay and finish his career here.

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  7. Russow not winning 40's. No way no how. Sweeney team will, Kelly unbeatable and they have solid doubles.

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    1. Kelly is not in Sweeney's team. Rich and Correia are tough 5.0s.

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    2. Still hope Sweeney wins. He is a great guy. If Rich is practicing, he is an absolute stud. At that, Correia is probably better.

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  8. Dallas tennis has become so boring that we are talking Fort Worth. We have no good teams. It will be another Houston beat down this year.

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    1. Houston rolls again. What else is new

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  9. No shit, the most interesting things going is Pickett v Rossouw and the Tony Le Tankfest. Sorry, he that shall not be named but you aren't interesting. I am sure you will still find a reason to comment about yourself.

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  10. You tell em! Yes Kelley u r not interesting. You are boring and I only read to see how Le and Other tankers are doing. They are much more exciting to talk about. They tank and still can't win at a lower level. Now that is exciting.

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  11. That picture looks like some of those 4.0s from FW

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    1. Yes but not the ad Dallas FW players.

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  12. Pickett and Rossouw had so many players that the covered wagons were how they got players to the matches in FW and back home. Nothing but the best.

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    1. Pickett's limo isn't what it used to be.

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  13. 4.0 Flight B should be interesting this weekend. CC vs Gleneagles and Fretz vs Greenhill. Hard to believe one of those teams won't even make QT.

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    1. All four are good teams and would have no trouble making at least QT in any other flight. Both will be tough matches but GH has been on a roll all season and CC has gotten its game back. GH & CC both win 3-2.

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    2. All four of these teams are capable of winning any flight. How did the DTA screw so many good teams again? We know they are no friend of Canyon Creek regardless of the conspiracy theorists.

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    3. Seeding based on previous seasons results and then random draw for the rest is what they do. They told us at captain's meeting. Check with your captain for the details and quit complaining.

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    4. DTA used to take care of Broohkaven and Canyon Creek but lately it seems like the DTA has cut CC loose. Maybe it has something to do with the endless complaining they do. DTA said no other place in down does as much complaining as CC and they file more baseless grievances than anyone else in town. Could be getting old.

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    5. Previous season's results. Dumbest rule ever, they count the fall results which no one cares about.

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    6. Not too bad. Fall playoffs had GTC and Greenhill in the finals. GTC has the automatic bid to QT and GH is doing pretty well this spring. So is Brookhaven, TBar, Fretz and Fretz. Of course HP has the best team but they didn't play in the fall.

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  14. With only one match left this season who will Tony Le play???

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  15. Whoever it is you better believe that they dont want to win and wont win, bunch of tanker POS's!

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    1. Quality work from Le's tank squad. Delapaz may have cemented a 3.5 rating.

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  16. How in the hell does Alan a send two lines to Brookhaven and still come away w a win. This guy can flat out captain!

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  17. Speaking of mixed lets see how punk ass Kelley faces off against Shawn Wooley in 8.0 mixed today. Talked to my buddy at TCu who said they were playing at 5. We will see how fun it is now that Kelly playing someone better than him and not a 4.0 man. Hope he gets his ass handed to him!!!!!!!

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  18. Punk ass Kelly annihilates Wooley and his partner. Probably was fun.

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  19. Maybe FW USTA should try to dq him as well. Ha ha

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  20. Does the usta not care if Tony Le and his team are such blatant tankers? This has gone on for years on this blog and no one seems to care??

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    1. I would think the usta does care but do you actually think usta looks at this blog? Are you serious? This blog is just a venting ground. Send in a formal written complaint if you actually have one instead of complaining to us here.

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  21. Have, they replied Tony is no threat to CC or Brookhaven do they swept it under the rug.

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  22. As predicted by anon last week Tony Le's tanker squad took the 0-5 collar! Great season guys you went 1-7 and your only win was a one line squeaker vs even bigger cheat Sisk! Of your 7 match loses 4 of them where 0-5 clean sweeps, you guys must really be proud of yourselves...

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  23. We are proud and have nothing to hide. If you don't like it just retire. 1:32 poster is the only one complaining.

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