Paddlepro.com has a recap of the entire tournament at this page: http://www.paddlepro.com/nationals/index.shtml
You'll see some familiar names in the draw sheets!
Nancy O'Sullivan teamed up with Terry Phelps Miller and made to the semi-finals with a big upset win over Mary Doten and Susie Keane. So, Nancy O. took 3rd or 4th place in the women's draw.
James Goldman and Charlie Usher upset two seeds on their way to a quarter-final match against Flip Goodspeed and Scott Mansager. That was the only match they lost, putting Goldman/Usher in fifth place for the men's draw.
Some comments from Nancy about the tournament:
"The experience for me started at the airport. Murphy's law would prevail throughout the day for this O'Sullivan. By the time I got to my gate, they had cancelled my flight due to weather conditions. I was then placed on stand by on the next plane to Pittsburgh at 3:40. I didn't make that one either. The last plane was leaving at 7pm and it didn't look good. I had contacted the tournament director to see if they could push back my 9 am match in the morning. There was a flight at 6 am that got into Pittsburgh at 9 am. The director said that no special arrangements could be made because we were not seeded in the draw and that we would have to forfeit our first round and play the back draw. Ugh! It was a long wait until 7pm (the beer made it go faster) but I did manage to get onto the flight. I also managed to get
to my hotel by midnight. It took me another hour to get into my room...that's another long story of mishap...Needless to say that I was tired and had to be ready for 4 matches the next day.
"My partner, Terry Miller (who had no problem with her plane) and I played a decent local team and won 6-0 6-1. I was glad to be on the court and not in the airport finally. We were then matched up with Marina Ohmuller and Susan Penny who are a solid team from out East. The points were good but they were rather shell shocked by our drives I think. Our next match we knew was going to be tough. We were playing
the Hinsdale legend, Mary Doten and her partner Susie Keane. They were the two time national champs and the #3 seed in the tourney. All the points were hard fought by everyone. We prevailed 6-4 6-3. Our 4th match of the day would be against another Chicago team, Sally Cottingham and Chris Sheldon who were seeded #5. It was night time, heavy snow and lots of steam from the heaters. We were down 0-3, 15-40
in the 3rd set and I'm not sure what happened but we won the next 6 games. We are now in the semi's. We lost to the top team from out East in 3 sets, who eventually won the National Championship.
We had a great tourney and I think Rich is happy that the drilling will finally end ...... or will it?????
Next, some comments from Charlie about the tournament:
"Quite a day for us.
- first round match against Nationally Ranked (#23) Crabtree/Moore at 7:30 a.m. It was chilly and snowy conditions. James correctly stated that snow benefits guys who regularly play in snowy conditions. Rather easy win, 6-1, 6-1.
- second round, a couple Pittsburgh locals who didn't belong in the second round. Easy match.
- third round, #7 seed Cordish/Caldwell. Huge hitters, kinda of play to our game, we think we can volley it. We scouted their previous match and decided that Caldwell's backhand was deadly. No matter what position we were in, there was no worse place to hit it than to Caldwell's backhand in the back court. We won the first set. Were down 5-4 in the second set, then won 3 quick games. It should be noted that on the first match point we had, James Goldman hit me squarely in the back of the head with his serve, what seemed to be our first really bad mistake of the day. Our strategy worked with Caldwell hitting less than a dozen backhands in the entire match. We were playing in the "stadium court" and it seemed that hundreds of people were watching. We thought we were really a big deal until we figured out that the Women's Finals was after us and all the fans were there jockeying for good seats for the next match.
- fourth round, #12 seed Power/Power. We owe this one to former Hinsdale player Andy Todd. Right before the match the Power brothers told Andy they had never heard of us. They asked Andy how they should play us. Andy told them our volleys were suspect and that they should just drive on us. They followed Andy's strategy. We just closed the net, made numerous drop shots, and won 6-2, 6-2.
- quarterfinals, 5th match of the day. Played #1 seeds Mansager/Goodspeed. Usher was out of gas, end of story. We lost quickly 6-0, 6-2.
- quarterfinal reprieve. In an unfortunate display of sportsmanship. All of our opponents were upset that they weren't in the semi's of the main draw. They all defaulted. We got 5th place overall.
Secret to success - James Goldman identified our biggest weakness. It was his serve. For the last 3 weeks he developed a new serve. Drilled on it regularly. Then made it work for the entire tourney.
Watch out for Goldman/Goldman in the upcoming Hinsdale Platform Tennis Open.
