This Week on the Courts

Wow. It must have been a slow Wednesday at work. The comments were coming rapid fire. I do track the visitors to this site...interestingly enough we do have some visitors from the USTA offices in New York. Perhaps some of the venting has at least reached the ears of someone in a position to do something about it. Don't get your hopes up.

Even though there are a bunch of interesting matches this week, the one I'm most curious about is in the 5.0 division. The Met is taking on Teague. Teague is out of things, but with Arun's "suspension", the Rice team is vulnerable and is in the awkward position of relying on the team that protested them. If Teague were to put out one of its strongest lineups the Met would be hard-pressed to beat them. As we've seen, Teague has not often fielded a top flight team, but I'll be curious to see if they put out any effort to help out the Rice team. I'm getting off the subject a bit, but one year my team was in a similar situation: two teams were slated to head to Sectionals from Houston and I needed the team that had clinched to kick a$$ in their final round robin match in city playoffs. I had some friends on the team and begged and pleaded for them to play a strong lineup. It was not one of my finer moments or something I'm proud of. However, they did field a strong lineup and we managed to make it to Sectionals. Later on their captain told me it was a very tough decision for him. On the one hand he felt it was fair to everyone that he put a competitive lineup out there every match, but on the other hand he had lower level players who had played all year and would love to have gotten a chance to play in city playoffs. Anyway, I probably never thanked him enough for his fairness. Thanks again. Too often we hear the negatives about League Tennis, but there are a lot of positive stories out there as well.

There's an important match in 4.0 Division II between Chancellor's and Briargrove Park. Both teams have two losses and the loser may be on the outside looking in for city playoffs. The first meeting of the two teams was rained out, so this is not necessarily a do or die situation. Chancellor's has added Dimitri Ang, a very good 4.0 player, so their roster is considerably stronger than it was early in the season.

In 4.5 Division I, Ssshhhwing again takes on West Side No Way Out. Ssshhhwing handled them pretty easily the first time, but Alex Bitoun and Peter Hill were not in the lineup in that one.

Kingwood looks to take care of business against the Yutts, who are still alive, at least mathematically, for a playoff berth. The Yutts had the misfortune of being in the same division as two heavyweights this year, but do have a lot of talent on their team.

I'm also curious to see if Men In Black have packed it up for the season. If so, the Hangovers will not be able to get some of their studs eligible for playoffs.

In other news, it appears that the Rice-Black Sheep makeup match has been entered as all defaults and a victory for Scott Carr's boys. Very strange, considering that a playoff berth was being heavily contested between the two of them. I wonder if there's a story there....