Hitler plays USTA league tennis in Dallas

This made made me LOL a little bit, Enjoy.

I'm not sure who made this, but thanks.

4.5 Sectionals Preview

Here is the link to the 4.0, 4.5 & 5.0 schedule for Sectionals: 

http://assets.usta.com/assets/642/15/Mens_4.0-Up_schedule_2012.pdf

It would be awesome to have many of you out there supporting the Dallas teams as well as that Fort Worth 4.5 team……  All in all 6 teams from our area will be represented at Spring Park, Huffines and Collin County Community College!

4.5 Flight 1:

SETX, Austin, Wild Houston & Valley

Austin are very strong and odds on favorite to make it to the finals on Sunday. 

4.5 Flight 2:

NETX, Dallas, North Houston & Austin Wild.

This is the Austin team that lost in last year’s final to Dallas/ Pickett.  They are strong despite losing a few players to 5.0.  North Houston were expected to have a solid team but now Houston looks like their better representative.  We know Royal Oaks will be tough.

I think Royal Oaks have a great shot to make it through here behind strong singles and then with Jason Moore & Craig Bell tough to beat at doubles.

4.5 Flight 3:

Fort Worth, San Antonio, San Angelo & Corpus Christi

This will probably come down to FW vs San Antonio on Friday at 1130am at Huffines. 

4.5 Flight 4:

Wild Dallas, Houston, Amarillo & Waco

Houston will be tough to beat and the Oak Creek depth is questionable.

Likely semis:

Austin vs Royal Oaks

Houston vs San Antonio or Fort Worth

4.5 Cities this weekend

Let’s see if I do better than last week where JCC finished second instead of the predicted 5^th and the Lakes came in last.  That result shows the difference between having a deep squad (like Royal Oaks who only had 11 available but still had quality lineups) and having limited depth -  Lakes were without 2 key players (Whittaker & Oberg) and as a result were not able to realize the potential that their full lineup threatened.
 
One of the surprise teams of the season was the Village.  Unfortunately I don’t see their Cinderella story continuing and are unlikely to win a match.  However, could they really be better than JCC?

Lifetime will be without their big Swedish stud (Mudsam) who was bumped to 5.0 for the fall.  Eddie and Featherstone have been great all season but against the quality of Royal Oaks, they might struggle.  Yes they already beat Royal Oaks once, but expect revenge as Royal Oaks bring the house!

I see Lifetime finishing 4th behind Oak Creek who have a lot of experience but may struggle in the heat against deep, quality lineups. Coach Rasor and Andy Alarid will need to be playing well for Lifetime to challenge Oak Creek or Somabut.

Oak Creek have a good roster on paper but will struggle to field back-to-back strong lineups in the heat.  John Wright, Ryan Snell, Brad Clark, Rudy Peters, Brad Tidwell & Kole Fink will all have to play a lot, and well, for this team to be competitive 

Second place, and a likely wildcard to Sectionals, will probably go to the High Point/Somabut team.  They have 5 strong lines and will give the other 4 teams fits.  Alfredo & Marcus are very difficult to play against and Tony & Ryan are also a handful.  Their third line is slightly weaker and their singles is solid.  Sam can easily play all 4 matches but Van may need to be subbed in for one of them.

On balance Royal Oaks are just that little bit better and will likely win that match 3-2.  You have to believe they will have more guys available than they did this past weekend.  If Wooley, Waldrep, Moore, Molina, Bell, Lawrence & Vogl are playing this team is very tough to beat…..

Here are my match-by-match picks:

1v4 Lifetime vs Somabut : Somabut 3-2

2v3 Village vs Oak Creek : Oak Creek 3-2

 

2v5 Village vs Royal Oaks : Royal Oaks 4-1

3v4 Somabut vs Oak Creek : Somabut 3-2

 

3v1 Lifetime vs Oak Creek : Oak Creek 3-2

5v4 Royal Oaks vs Somabut : Royal Oaks 3-2

2v4 Village vs Somabut : Somabut 4-1

1v5 Royal Oaks vs Lifetime : Royal Oaks 4-1

5v3 Royal Oaks vs Oak Creek : Royal Oaks 4-1

1v2 Lifetime vs Village : Lifetime 3-2

 
Final Standings:

1.      Royal Oaks 4&0

2.      Somabut 3&1

3.      Oak Creek 2&2

4.      Lifetime 1&3

5.      Village 0&4

Have fun guys! Play hard and call them fair

2012 Early Season Rating

The 2012 Early Season Ratings for USTA League Tennis players are now available.

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4.5 QT Preview (July 13-15)

So the field was set almost a month ago.  I can’t wait forever for the DTA to release the schedule so here is a write-up…. (I am no Bookie so not sure these odds even make sense but hopefully you get the picture):

10/1 JCC – I was surprised that this team lost to the Village.  I don’t know if that is because JCC are not as good as we thought or because Village are better?  The bottomline is that these guys have a tough 3 days ahead of them.  They can field 5 solid lines but I don’t see any that are clear favorites in any matchup against the other 4 teams.  Shulman is a strong player and so obviously are Vahdat and Reiman.  Tim Williams can also be tricky.  I don’t expect them to be blown-out by anyone but expect some a few 2-3 losses and some surprise wins.  (I am putting them behind Garland only because in the fall playoffs Garland won the head-to-head but these two teams are close.)

8/1 Garland – this team has made the QT based on the exceptional singles form of Trent O’Bannon & Jermaine Mayfield.  Hiram Gonzalez is a good player who has hopefully returned from his travels and will be in form by the QT weekend.  Andy Xu has proven to be very good also but his work and family commitments have made his practice schedule questionable.  The big question is what Big John does with his doubles lines.  We know Brent O’Bannon and Vassberg have done well together.  Hai Nguyen has Nationals experience and Jimmy Fenn is always dangerous! Like JCC we may suffer a few 2-3 losses but hopefully squeak a few 3-2 wins also…..

6/1 Lakes/ Way – knocked-off TBar 3-2 to secure their Qt berth and made it out of a very tough flight.  Not to be underestimated this team has a weakness at singles although Blake Wittacker has been the stand-out exception.  If he is not available for any matches this team will be in big trouble.  Welwood may be good at singles but hasn’t proven it yet and my guess would be that they would field Oberg & Pollock and then Welwood & Jannesch on 2 of the dubs lines with Wittacker hoping to pickup the 3^rd win?  Feldman is just returning from surgery so his fitness is questionable and while Dunford, Richardson & Fankhauser are solid I don’t think they can stack up against Royal Oaks exceptional depth.

5/1 Favorites: GlenEagles – This is a very dangerous team! Culley & Brown won Cotton Bowl together and have done well at 5.0 this season.  Tim Brownlee went to Nationals with Hi Pt last year and their supporting cast of Tom Juhn, Robert Reeves and Chris Lewis make them a similar proposition to the Lakes team.  Again though I don’t see them matching up with Royal Oaks in quality depth.  However, you only need to win 3 lines in each match.

1/8 FAVORITES: Royal Oaks – have made it by virtue of winning the Fall but lost to both Garland and Lifetime during this past season.  They definitely have the deepest roster.  Last year they had numerous players unavailable for play-offs but essentially finished second to High Point in the final push for sectionals berth.  I believe this is still the team to beat at QT and possibly even at Cities but they have a tough path.  The best 8 players on this team in my opinion are: Lawrence, Flores, Vogl, Moore, Wooley, Waldrep, Bell & Durten.  Clossen is a strong player as is Warner.  Apparently Molina is also good but I don’t know anything about him.  Stidham is solid as are Devereaux and Wegmann - most teams would be excited to have them in their top 8.  Of course there is always the wildcard Webb, who when on, is a 5.0 player!  With this kind of depth, if Rothwell avoids the pressure to play the other guys on the roster, and assuming they are all available – he should field 5 strong lines and often fresh players, for every match!  This is key in the July Dallas heat.

Hit 'em hard; hit 'em in and call them fair!