By By Tom Richter, Contributing Writer
Editor’s Note: At the request of the Daily News, Tom Richter will provide daily updates of the Washington Senior Men’s Tennis team that is competing in Birmingham, Alabama at the USTA Southern regional tournament. Team members are, Richard Hodges, Gil Davis, Tom Quarnstrom, Jeff Fenton, Brownie Futrell, Dick Brown, David Norwood, Tom Richter, Mike Gray and Dennis O’Neal. This is Richter’s first report, filed on Wednesday:
The 10-man Washington senior men’s tennis team, winners of the state championship a month ago, left Wednesday for Birmingham, Ala., the site of the USTA Southern Regional Tournament. Half traveled by van, the others by car or by air. All arrived safely with no reported hits or errors except for some self-inflicted verbal abuse, a normal part of men playing like boys.
The annual southern USTA regional is among the largest tennis tournaments on the planet. Nationally, there are 300,000 USTA competitors. The southern region has the largest membership of any region, close to 100,000, with 18,000 people advancing to the various 10 southern state championships. In Birmingham the state winners, some 2,000 people, are out to vie for the regional championship. Of those 2,000 people, 250 will go to Indian Wells, Ariz., to compete for the national title. The competitors are divided into about a dozen classes by age, sex and the USTA ability ratings.
Over the last 20 years, Washington has had a surprising number of state championship winning teams (perhaps 20), a few regional winners, and even one national championship team in 2000. These results, and the great results of our small town high school teams, have cemented Washington’s reputation as a ‘tennis town’.
The competition began on Thursday morning with a match against Louisiana and resumed with an afternoon match against Georgia. A team match is made up of three doubles team matches. So some of the team’s members will play twice in what will likely be 100 degree heat index conditions; a tall order for senior tennis players, or anyone else.
Today, there will only be one match against Kentucky. On Saturday, it will be one match as well, against Arkansas. The tournament involves 10 states, in two five-team brackets. The winner of each bracket will play for all the marbles on Sunday morning.