The 2013 season Starts now...

 40 and Over, Baby

Last week end started the 2013 season for the Dallas Men's league with the inaugural Men's 40 and over league. I was initially excited about the changes to the leagues that the USTA was promoting. I thought the by dividing the leagues into 3 separate age groups, 18 and Over, 40 and Over, and 55 and Over it might make for more competitive matches.
Keep Captains from trolling the school yards with bags of Candy recruiting the 17 yrs old ex high School phenoms. Allow more older players to keep playing singles. Shake up the stagnant ranks. Prohibit Sandbagging, Keep more realistic levels at sectionals.
But in typical USTA and DTA fashion it looks like it has devolved into a poorly thought out money grab. Instead on running the leagues at the same time, giving players the incentive to play in their age group. The leagues have been grouped concurrently to craft a 12 month revenue stream for the DTA.
A tennis death march, dragging the oldest players through the long winter and spring until they colapse in the summer.
Problem 1) Why start a league in December starting right before Christmas spanning the worst weather periods.
Problem 2) Why allow players with to sign up and play in 2013 with a mid season 2012 rating? Arenas, Juan 4.5 Bearden, Blake 4.5 Burton, Chris 4.5 Clark, Keith 4.5 Gerber, Alan 4.5 Kargel, Mark L. 4.5 Kingsley, Vince 4.5 Lee, Shyh-Chin 4.5 Minter, Michael Blair 4.5 Nguyen, Hai Thanh 4.5 Peterson, Tom 4.5 Voss, Doug 4.5 Any Idea why these guys should be playing in a 4.0 team?
Problem 3) 4.5+ WTF?? is that even fair? 12 - 5.0 players, 15 - 4.0 players, and 91 - 4.5 players. Why do these 12 5.o guys want to bother handing out the beat down?
Let me get off my soap box and look at Week #1

3.5 40 & over I don't know much about 3.5 tennis. But the award for most confusing team goes to:
Prosper/Oh 3.5
A team that plays in McKinney, not Prosper, at a facility called 'Lifetime Tennis' That is NOT in anyway affiliated with Lifetime Fitness.
If I have to pick a team here I guess it would be Fretz, this team features 'Feather Bob' Bender and 'Capt Fantastic' Bill Kiaser.

4.0 40 & over
A lot of parody here in the 4.0 division. With all of the week 1 matches finishing up at 3-2, I expect plenty of rocking and rolling before the season is over.
Team Rockwall Newman looks to be comprised of ex-HP Somabut re-treads
(BTW. After a pretty good 2012, looks like a tough fall for Newman and Voss, just saying)
HP Wiley - Greg has put together a surprisingly strong team at the last minute made up of Garland and Lifetime spare parts.
Greenhill, Canyon Creek, and Springpark should all be in the mix as well.

4.5 40 & over
It looks like the 5.0 players are pretty evenly distributed among the teams, But come sectionals time I can see a team of 5.0 players from another city blowing it out. HP and Greenhill swept in week 1. But the real high water mark may have been Tbar vs Fair Oaks where FO dominated in singles but TBar swept the Dubs for the win.

Next Week
Match of the Week 4.0 HP Wiley vs 4.0 Rockwall Newman

Novak Djokovic is buying the world’s entire supply of donkey cheese

Novak Djokovic is buying the world’s entire supply of donkey cheese

By Jay Busbee | Busted Racquet – 6 hours ago

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Why is this man smiling? Donkey cheese! (Getty Images)We know that "Novak Djokovic is buying the world's entire supply of donkey cheese" sounds like the kind of headline that would show up around April Fool's, but it's apparently legit. The world No. 1 is spending millions to purchase all of the rare cheese made from, uh, donkey milk.

The cheese, known as pule, is white, crumbly and made from donkey's milk. It runs over $500 per pound, in part because one pound of the cheese requires over three gallons of milk. It's produced in Djokovic's native Serbia, and he plans to use it in his soon-to-open chain of restaurants. (Too much to hope that the restaurants are named "Donkey Cheese"?)

Pule recently received the distinction of the "world's most expensive cheese." Created at one farm in one town in Serbia, the cheese is derived from milk on one of Serbia's most well-known natural reserves. Djokovic purchased the farm's entire year's supply.

"It will save a lot of effort having to deal with various restaurants, with only one customer buying the lot we don't have to worry too much about salesmen," said Slobodan Simic, manager of the farm. "It is a great vote of confidence as well in what we do here." Simic recently told Reuters that the cheese could fetch as much as $2,900 a pound if it were sold on the open market, but it's sold privately at around $576 a pound to promote the farm's conservation efforts.

Congrats to Djokovic for cornering the donkey cheese market. We look forward to Donkey Cheese Sticks and Donkey Cheese Omelets showing up on his menus very soon.