Mid Level 4.0 and Mid Life Crisis Nationals 40+ Nationals

We are in our last weekend of Men's Nationals  Our very own 40+ 4.0 Dallas team represents us.  Fretz/Clark looks eerily similar to Le/High Point 18s sans Tony's young ringers.  Regardless, you have Tony, De La Paz, Newman/Voss, Arcaria and  Clark.  That looks like some pretty stout doubles.

In singles, Clark used Scott Faris (who?) and Jacques Mbede (Who?) in the sectionals finals.  Both easily handled Janek and Vu who are a couple of Freeman's front tine players.  There is Zackary for quality depth.  I can't imagine many people have this much 40s singles depth.

I am liking their chances but they are in a tough flight.  They have the always tough Caribbean and they get to start with them.  They follow that up with Eastern which is not a typical power section but they will have something.  On Saturday, they get Florida and I have to think Florida is better at 55+ but they usually have excellent players.  They finish with Midwest which is usually tough.  They don't have an easy go of it.

In the end, since I am a Dallas guy and I am picking Texas to win everything, I am picking them.  Their excellent doubles lines and great singles depth tell me they have a great chance.  Good Luck Boys!

4.5 and 3.5 over 40s Nationals

4.5s - Indian Wells, now that's living right.

Texas is represented by a tough Austin team that is driven by an unstoppable force at #1 singles.  And if I have to have one player, I'd like him to be an unstoppable force at #1 singles.  Don't really have to worry as much about who he draws.

Flight 5 has Midwest, Caribbean, Northern California, New England and Hawaii.  Caribbean isn't the powerhouse at 4.5 that it is at 3.0 and 3.5.  Hawaii has surprised on the upside at 4.5 before but NoCal has to be the favorite here.

Flight 6 has Middle States, Texas, Southern California and Eastern.  Ouch.  Texas, Middle States and SoCal are all tough to get through. Juan Dekruyff from the Austin team has sailed through the season and the most interesting thing for me to watch will be how he does at nationals.  He has rocked some very good players in Texas.  Austin beat San Angelo in sectionals finals 3-2 but both losses were in three sets.  The Texas/SoCal match will be huge but sooner or later I've got to take Texas.

Flight 7 is Mid-Atlantic, Northern, Southwest and Pacific NW.  Mid-Atlantic has had some success at this level before but this team is a bit of a mystery.  This is a pick 'em.

Flight 8 is Southern, Florida, Intermountain and Missouri Valley.  The haves and the have nots.  Southern and Florida duke it out but Southern is my pick.

3.5s - Tucson, that should be punishment enough.

Fight 5 has the five team flight of Pacific NW, Hawaii, Southwest, Southern California and Missouri Valley.  I'd have to look at PacNW or SoCal to take this flight but don't overlook Southwest when you get into these old guy formats.

Flight 6 has New England, Northern, Eastern and Mid-Atlantic.  Sorry but I wouldn't expect any of these teams to make the semis if they weren't all in the same flight together.  Maybe one of them will surprise.  I'll take Mid-Atlantic for no particular reason.

Texas is in flight 7 along with Southern, Eastern, Florida and Mid-Atlantic.  That's a pretty solid flight.  Can't imagine why Caribbean isn't in there with Texas and Southern.  I also like to look at Florida for old guy events, just the law of averages.  Let's go with Southern here.

Flight 8 has Middle States, Northern California, Caribbean and Midwest.  Another respectable flight.  I'll take this flight winner to at least make the finals.  NorCal is always tough, but if it's 3.5 or 3.0, you have to go through Caribbean.  They aren't as dominant at the age levels as they are at 18s but they did just win the national title at 3.0 over 40 last weekend.

For those of you that may not recall, 3.5 over 40s was an all San Antonio final.  The team that won cities ended up getting beat by Wild San Antonio in sectionals finals.  While both teams looked pretty strong on paper, I'm going to shy away from picking Texas in this division.

8.5 Combo Champs

Combo can be the forgotten event.  There aren't a lot of competitors and if you aren't in the know it might just pass by without you even noticing it.  It's also not a glamor event like tri-level with the allure of playing at Indian Wells during the BNP.  I hear it's a tremendous experience.

It seems like most people drawn to 7.5 combo didn't make the playoffs or go far so this is another shot at the brighter lights.  This was not the case with 8.5 combo, however.  In recent years it seems like this has been an event with a lot of focus from one John Sisk and this year was no different.  Last year he was taken out by a surprising team out of Wichita Falls and in 2013 it was a tough finals loss to San Antonio.  It was 2012 the last time Sisk hoisted the 8.5 combo trophy.

But this year, led by his national champion 4.0s instead of his traditionally strong 4.5s, the Sisk/Kingsley team swept a surprising Midland team in the finals.

Congrats on the win guys.  Sorry it's only a towel and not a trip to Palm Springs.

But I'm already starting to scour the rosters in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth for an in depth tri-level overview.

If at first you don't succeed, at least try one more time

Normally I wouldn't focus on something like 3.0 over 40 Nationals but a funny thing happened this weekend.  This event was a three flight format so the best second place team makes the semi-finals along with the three flight play winners.  In this case, the flight winners were Pacific NW (1), Southern (2) and Texas (3).  This would normally have flight 1 winner PNW against flight 3 winner Texas in the semis and flight 2 winner Southern playing the best second place team Caribbean.  However, since Southern and Caribbean were originally in the same flight they can't play each other in the semis so it was Caribbean versus Texas and Southern versus Pacific NW.

In flight play Southern had beaten Caribbean 3-2.  Caribbean swept singles easily but Southern won all three doubles lines in third set tie breakers.  After Caribbean beat Texas 3-2 and Southern beat Pacific NW 4-1 it set up a flight play rematch in the finals.  At this point I'd expect another Caribbean sweep of singles and Caribbean to find a way to edge one its doubles teams over the line.

Caribbean pulls their #2 singles guy and moves him to doubles while rolling out their #1 and #3 guys for singles.  It almost works as the #1 guy rolls but their #3 guy gets beat in three sets.  The #2 singles guy who moved to doubles gets his line into the win column and one of the other two existing doubles lines gets a favorable matchup in the reshuffle and Caribbean wins 3-2 for the title.  It's an interesting study in the moves you'd make the second time around.  We see this a lot in the city playoffs but the Caribbean captain found a way to make it work in the national finals.

Not to be forgotten, the High Point/Bender team did defeat Pacific NW for third place.

Congratulations guys.

3.0 over 40 Nationals

I didn’t realize this until just now, but Dallas has a team at Nationals this weekend at 3.0 over 40s.  Maybe not a high point of blog fodder but they are from Dallas so let’s give them a little coverage.

Texas is in flight 3 with Intermountain, Florida, Missouri Valley and Mid-Atlantic.  Shouldn’t Florida and Arizona be good at all the age level events, especially as the ages get higher?  Florida did got 12-3 on lines at sectionals so a pretty strong showing.  The Tulsa team (MoV) had fairly pedestrian results and only had to beat two teams all season to make Nationals.  Must be nice.  Intermountain had pretty fair results but if history means anything, this won’t be the team to beat.  Mid-Atlantic is also hard to call.  They beat four teams at cities but only one team at sectionals.  Not a lot of information to go by but I’d guess its Texas and Florida in this flight.

Flight 1 has Southwest, Northern California, Pacific NW, Middle States and Midwest making for a pretty tough flight.  Also tough is Flight 2 with Caribbean, Southern, Hawaii, Southern California and Eastern.  When you compress down to three flights it makes for some really tough flight play matchups.

With only three flights, as I understand it the winner of Texas’s flight will get the winner of flight 1 in the semis.  No scores are posted yet but they should start popping up soon.