I went out to Kingwood on Saturday morning to check out some of the Tri-Level stuff. The quality of play was quite high this year. I've always said that tri-level is a great event and really wish there was more participation locally.
I really don't know more than what's been reported by the commenters. My understanding is that the Houston team went into the last match in a practically hopeless situation. Austin had won their first two matches and Fort Worth needed Houston to beat Austin in order to have any chance at advancing, and in fact pleaded with the Houston team to give their best effort, as it would be most fair for everyone.
While Fort Worth was worrying about Austin, they apparently didn't realize that by sweeping, Houston would put themselves in a position to win as well. After watching the Houston team in the morning match, this seemed EXTREMELY unlikely. I believe Tony Le was essentially captaining both the Fort Worth and Wild Dallas teams (could be wrong about this) and could have chosen to have his players retire in order to assure a 3-0 victory for Fort Worth, but instead allowed them to play it out. Well, witnesses reported that the line one match between Benjamin/Huynh and Luedtke/McClinton was won by Wild Dallas in the super tiebreaker. Apparently, when Le found out what happened in the Houston/Austin match, he realized his error and told his players to report the match as a 6-1, 6-1 win for Fort Worth.
It took them something like an hour to sort things out, and shamelessly no player who was on the court admitted the truth. Some Houston players witnessed the match but as biased observers their evidence was discounted.
It's hard to put a stop to someone captaining two teams...we've seen it locally quite a bit. Quite often, the person listed as the captain is just a figurehead for someone else controlling the team. I've probably been listed as captain myself a couple of times when I was doing very little actual captaining. There's a lot of shadiness in League Tennis, but the backroom dealing and/or match fixing is the worst of it. Not really sure how it can be prevented. I hear whispers every year about someone possibly laying down for someone else to allow their friends' teams to qualify for city playoffs. When there is so much smoke, there must be some fire behind those rumors.
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Well that officially makes Tony Le the world's stupidest cheater.
ReplyDeleteTuan Tran posted this on that facebook thing, but I don't know if everyone is a member there and plus I think the whole state of Texas should know about the scum in Dallas.
ReplyDeleteAll Star Weekend brought all kinds of celebrities and superstar athletes to the space city the past few days But right up 59 north at Kingwood Country Club the weekend also brought a fair share of douchebags to our city as well. Tri level sectionals were held and for whatever reason the Dallas-Ft Worth area were allowed 3 teams in the competition. Jason Freeman and Mike Tran assembled an "all star" lineup if you will with Soong and The Big O, Odion Dibua at 4.5, Tuyen "All I Do Is" Nguyen, myself and circus connesseur Richard Patton at 4.0 and the greatest 3.5 ever Bad Ass Bobby Dornbos and newcomer John Lu. So going into the weekend we felt pretty good about our chances of making it to Indian Wells for nationals. The Houston team would beat Wild Dallas in the opening round 2-1. The highlight would be Patton making a cameo and administering a clinic on Wild Dallas before departing for his Fiji tour. Next up was Ft Worth who definitely came to play surprising the Houston team 2-1 with Bobby D and John Lu being the lone bright spot. So going into the final match Freeman's team still had a chance if they beat the undefeated Austin team there would be a three way tie. The pressure was on the Houston team and they delivered sweeping the undefeated Austin team. This would force Ft Worth to have to sweep Wild Dallas too. One line lost and Houston advances. Co captain Mike Tran who had been watching the Wild Dallas-Ft Worth match up notified his team that Wild Dallas had taken the 4.5 line. This was later confirmed by Rizarri, he spoke to Wild Dallas player Sam Huynh (if anyone was curious of what a vietnamese kid with down syndrome looked like Sam would be it) who also said he had won his line. But as they got to the tournament desk the Houston team soon found out that the scores reported were completely different. Apparently Wild Dallas and Ft Worth reported that Ft Worth swept Wild Dallas 3-0 and the scores were all blowouts, 6-1, 6-0 which would mean Ft Worth would advance. (tiebreaker came down to games lost)What happened next still perplexes me. Freeman and Mike Tran pleaded their case to USTA officials and for some strange reason the Dallas and Ft Worth players that were involved in the match were no where to be found. After what seemed to be about 1 hour their captain Tony Le (who by the way will never be confused for a model and get this he has 2 sisters who look exactly like him. You know the phrase, "He fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down"? Well this applies to Tony's whole family. And you know how sometimes a person might be completely heinous physically but they have a fun or nice personality? Not the case here.) was finally able to produce the players for USTA officials to question. They all of course denied what Tran and Rizarri were saying and told the officials that they did lose 6-1, 6-1. A team that in a previous round beat Soong and Odion lost 6-1, 6-1 is real believable. USTA tried to get the players to tell the truth by telling them "If scores were reported incorrectly there will be consequences". Thank you Dallas-Ft Worth and USTA officials for wasting our fkn weekend. Thanks to Jason Freeman and Michael Tran for asking me to be part of the team. Thanks to Richard Patton and Tuyen Nguyen for carrying me. And thanks to Ronnie Kwan and Robert Rizarri for the support and making me feel like part of the team. Congrats to Bobby Bobby Dornbos and John Lu for going undefeated.
Tony Le does sound like a douche bag but Freeman and company should have just won all their matches. Problem solved... It is hard for me to feel a lot sympathy for Freeman and Tuan when they have been known to manipulate the system a time or two... all at the expense of fellow Houstonians.
Delete+1 for this comment. Sounds like Houston got hosed, but the guys who got cheated are some of the biggest manipulators the city has to offer. What goes around finally came back around.
DeleteWith that said Tuan Tran should have a awesome personality too. Freeman/Tuan got what they deserved.
DeleteWin all your matches and you're going to Nationals. Houston did not. Ft. Worth did not. Dallas did. They deserve to go. The rest is just crying over 2nd place.
ReplyDeleteIt was a fun weekend of tennis and we just came up a little short. Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin all had great teams and each of those teams could have taken the title. Joel Pickett's Dallas team won it (again) and Tony Le's Fort Worth team was a worthy finalist as they soundly beat us straight-up head-to-head. Although there was a little temporary drama it was quickly settled and everyone moved on. Tony Le is a good captain and his roster was full of talented, high-character guys and I expect to see his teams continue to do well and represent Dallas/Fort Worth in the future.
ReplyDeleteFreeman
Nice response Freeman. In contrast to the classless one by Tuan Tran on FB, that shows a lack of character.
DeleteThat's bullshit. I bet Freeman is just as pissed as Tuan but playing polititcs. He is a lawyer after all.
DeleteI don't like Tuan and think maybe he went overboard with his downs syndrome and ugly sister comments. But the guy was cheated blatantly. I'd be mad as shit too. Those cheaters deserve the insults. And more.
You can insult a person's game, tactics, strokes and attitude, but let's keep it on subject. Not sure that Tuan would want to open the door for others to insult his family, would you? No matter how mad your are, or badly you were cheated.
DeleteTypical of Tuan to talk all that trash online. He should work on his game and waistline.
DeleteIs Tuan the Round Mound of Houston tennis, or is there a better candidate?
DeleteNow that is a classy and modest response. Hats off to you Freeman.
ReplyDeleteI like Tuan's response much better.
ReplyDeleteFrom now on, bust out your cell phones and record everything. Freeman is a lawyer, so he'll know what to do with solid evidence. Make sure those kind of cheaters get banned for life from tennis. See if it was all worth it in the end.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what Freeman would do. Not like USTA Texas will do anything. If they let that crap happen when everyone observed it, why do you think anything would happen. Why the last place Dallas team got a wild card and one captain gets 2 teams in the same flight is a mystery.
DeleteThe problem is that other Sections won't make the trip because they know it will be Dallas or Houston in the end. Because of the history of sandbagging that big both cities are known for, the smaller Sections who have a seed but no hope end up withdrawing. If I had to drive over 200 miles to go play 3 matches when I knew I would have my ass handed to me, I wouldn't make the trip either. Looks like this time no-one wanted to take the spot, and Le had players who all knew each other so were willing to travel. I'm sure they would have come regardless of what flight they landed in. This time, it turned out to his advantage. I'm sure it wasn't premeditated. Doesn't sound as if he is smart enough for that. As the poster commented, perhaps USTA prohibits one captain from running 2 teams so something like this doesn't happen in the future.
ReplyDeleteOf course he’s pissed, Jason’s response was written by [i]his[/i] lawyer! But he’s more pissed that his team let itself get into the situation where it could get hosed. He knows that if you take care of business and win all of your matches, none of this happens. Feb 18 at 4:25 said it first and I agree.
ReplyDeleteJason knows full well that league tennis is a dirty business at the top, and that you have to be prepared to fight tooth, nail, and pencil if you want that coveted championship trophy – because your strongest competition absolutely will. You can’t tell me that he’s never turned in a less-than-accurate score, or effectively managed two teams at the same level. DFW simply ramped it up a notch by doing it at Sectionals, and then got into the position where they could make full use of it. He’s not bitter at all about having such tactics used against him. He’ll learn from this experience and next time will ramp up his own game, such as by putting better monitoring in place (with video evidence) on the other matches. Honestly, the “inner game” is what makes it fun for a non-playing captain, like chess with live pieces.
At least karma is alive and well and Le’s team lost in the final.
Sounds like you are advocating blantant cheating in support of the win-at-all-cost strategy. Do you think that the tennis community looks at Tony Le and says "I want to be on his team"? I would be embarrassed to be on his current and future teams because of the cheating stigma.
DeleteAnother reason why I don't play USTA league any more.
Advocating? Not at all. Just recognizing a sad but true fact of life.
DeleteHouston Open Predictions?
ReplyDeleteDallas team won the tri level nationals at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells.
ReplyDeleteFYI, Tony captained a Dallas team and a Ft Worth team. His Dalas team got third in cities loosing out to Picket's Dallas team and Sisk's team from Garland. When Dallas was awarded the wildcard it was Sisk's team that should have been the Dallas Wild team that should have gone on. Sisk's team could not get enough of his team to make the trip and pulled out less than a week prior. So with just a few days notice, Tx Section offered the spot to the third place team which was Tony's Dallas team. USTA should have split the two teams up on different sides of the draw since they had the same captain but the alternative would have been a default.
ReplyDeleteTony Le didn't have enough players available from his Wild Dallas team to play either. It looks like he defaulted the 3.5 line every match and according to his teammates one of the 4.0s that he "reported" as playing in all 3 matches was not even at sectionals. Noeh Romero played in all Wild Dallas 4.0 matches but recently bumped-up-to-4.5 David Kingery got credit for the 3 losses with sets that were 6-0, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1, 6-4, 6-1.
DeleteWelcome to Dallas league tennis, this is a glimpse of the type of stuff that we've been dealing with in Dallas (and now Fort Worth) for years. Sadly, this stuff is not unusual, it is expected.
I like Houston's chances against Dallas if Tony Le is the best Dallas has to offer. He is obviously an enormous cheat but he is a really stupid cheat. He is a future Darwin award candidate.
DeleteBrad Beinart HTA Open 4.0 winner
ReplyDeleteHey HTown how about a new discussion about the Coca Cola and who's the favorites?
ReplyDeleteLooks like the Dallas blog is treating Tony Le like we treat Pete Rios...
ReplyDelete