4/21/16:
“Challenge/Tourney Matches in multiple locations, Spin hosts 4 at C.G.!”:
GTA Thursday Night Tennis featured the best weather of the week as the peak temperature earlier in the day was close to 80 degrees and it was sunny and dry.
"Hollywood" Frank Samara announced earlier in the day that he would be unavailable to host the session at Robin Hood Park in Clifton or the one at Cedar Grove (more on those who covered for him later in this report).
Despite it being a perfect spring day, it was just as well that Frank remained home as he was a combination of depressed and saddened...as I'm sure many others were.
Samara left his mother's house (and his internet access) at 1pm. Driving with the windows down, he headed to the store and his eyes (particularly his right one) started to get teary due to the pollen in the air. Luckily, he was able to pop a Claritin pill to suppress this allergic reaction.
It worked remarkably fast as it dried his eyes within ten minutes or so. Upon leaving the store, he got back into his car around 1:15. Z100 happened to be the station on his FM dial at that time. They were playing "Purple Rain" by Prince.
At first, Frank thought this was a cool change of pace. But as soon as he had that thought, he started to get chills as he feared it meant something bad...very bad. Sure enough, as soon as the last note of that song was finished, the DJ announced that TMZ and other news sources had confirmed that Prince passed away earlier in the day at the relatively young age of 57.
I'm not ashamed to admit that my eyes welled up once again...and this time around, no pill was going to fix it.
Perhaps I should not be discussing this in a tennis report, but I was absolutely blown away. Since I was a kid of about seven or eight years old...whenever I first heard "I Wanna Be Your Lover" on the radio, Prince has been one of my all-time favorite artists. "Purple Rain", both the movie and the soundtrack, had a major impact on my life...but so did so many more of his LPs and singles.
I spent the rest of the day searching the dial for stations playing his monumental multitude of hits. Z100 and Hot 97 each went somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half playing his songs uninterrupted by any other artists.
But major kudos to Power 105 as the only station not to abandon Prince's catalog all the way until 8pm that night. Those songs served as the backdrop as I got caught up with typing these Results reports. It was also a musical education for my children as they had already heard many of his songs, but did not realize they were all from the same brilliant artist.
Prince was a true musical genius. He played just about every instrument on all of his albums, wrote all of his material and even wrote hits for other artists (“Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O'Connor, “Manic Monday” by The Bangles and “I Feel for You” by Chaka Khan immediately come to mind).
Not since the passing of John Lennon back when I was 10 years old has the death of an artist moved me as much as Prince's passing moved me today. That is saying a lot because we had the untimely deaths of Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Scott Weiland and David Bowie within that span of time.
His catalog of hits can be reasonably compared to the likes of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin...he was truly that prolific and influential. To those who perhaps may be less familiar with his work, he was something like a combination of John Lennon, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone...but also offered a whole lot more as he was a true original. He will be sorely missed as he left us far too soon. It was just a couple of years ago that I saw him as the musical guest on "SNL" and he rocked out like a man twenty or more years his junior. We have lost too many great artists over the past half year or so.
I hope that trend is put on hold for a long time...but I guess I am entering that stage of life where this will continue to happen repeatedly. And I will be reminded of my own pending mortality as well.
Sorry for the rant...if you want to call it that. But I felt it necessary to pay proper tribute to Prince as he is heavily on my mind at this time.
I exchanged text messages with both "Spin Doctor" Dan Martinelli and "The Legendary" Chazz Weldon about Prince over the course of the day.
As for Chazz, it all started when he sent me a very timely text message about a full 2 out of 3 Sets Challenge Match that he had against Jay "The Rising" Phoenix at RHP.
Weldon was informed earlier in the season that he could defend his rank in the Advanced Division, but would have to refrain from putting his GTA Intermediate Title on the line until a winner emerges from the ongoing GTA Intermediate Invitational Tournament. So his battle with Phoenix was a Non-Title Match.
Soon after the result report from Weldon, "The S Bomber" Genalin Capan also sent in a score along with some other details about the session. And then “RK Fire” Rafaelo Kazakov reported his result from there as well.
I thank Chazz, Gen and Rafaelo for their timely reports.
Also, earlier in the day, "Automatic" Anna Mazur informed me that she would be playing "The Natural" Natalie Guzman in a full 2 out of 3 Sets Challenge Match in order to get Guzman into the Women's Division and qualified for entry into the upcoming GTA Women's Championship Tournament. This match took place up in Anna’s home turf area of Wood-Ridge.
But we’re not done as “Big Kaz” Mike Kazlauskas reported his GTA Intermediate Invitational Round of 16 Match against “Eddie O” Edwin Ortega which took place in the later afternoon at The Cedar Grove Courts (the older ones down the road) after first attempting to play at The Mountainside Courts in Montclair and then our usual courts at C.G. (both locations were completely occupied).
And then you have “Spin Doctor” Dan Martinelli who acted as the impromptu host of the Cedar Grove session.
We’re going to now attempt to tackle all of this in chronological order: Cedar Grove, RHP, Wood-Ridge and then Cedar Grove again as it was two separate sessions.
So we first go to the report from Big Kaz.
We decided to try to play at The Mountainside Courts in Montclair since there are seven courts there and we thought it would be no problem for us to have a match there.
However, right after we started warming up at 3pm, the Montclair High School Tennis Team took over all of the courts.
Then we decided to head to the C.G. courts, and surprise, surprise…those courts were all taken by high school students as well.
We ended up going to the two courts down the road in C.G.
The Cedar Grove Result:
GTA Intermediate Invitational Round of 16 Match:
Mike Kazlauskas over Edwin Ortega, 6-1, 6-2, to successfully defend his # 2 Rank in the Intermediate Division while advancing to the Quarterfinals of the GTA Intermediate Invitational Tournament! No Aces.
The 1st Set started both of us holding serve for 1-1. Then I took the next five games as I broke Ed twice.
The 2nd Set was more competitive. I was leading 5-0 in the set and was serving for the match. That is when Ed broke my serve. One Double Fault of mine, two Unforced Errors and I could not catch up. And then in the next game, Ed held his serve. We had at least 5 Deuces in that game. However, Ed prevailed and made it 5-2 going back to my serve. Fortunately I was able to close out the match with my next service game. The match length was about one hour.
Samara’s Notes: I thank Mike for that very comprehensive report and congratulate him on his victory. He now advances to the Quarters where he will face Senthil Kumar.
We now head to RHP for the three-headed report as it was sourced by Chazz, Gen and Rafaelo.
The RHP Results:
Mike Mole over Genalin Capan, 6-1! Mike: 2 Aces!
Gen's Notes: We got to RHP at 4:30 and hit for about 40 minutes. This One-Setter lasted about 30 minutes on Championship Court. We finished by 6pm.
2 out of 3 Sets Challenge/Non-Title Match:
Chazz Weldon over Jay Phoenix, 6-1, 6-3, to successfully defend his # 12 Rank in the Advanced Division (Weldon's GTA Intermediate Title was not on the line)! No Aces.
Chazz Weldon over Jay Phoenix, 6-2! Chazz and Jay: 1 Ace each!
All That Chazz: We played on the Entrance Court from 4:50 to 6:38 (that includes the One-Setter after the full match). The 2nd Set of the full match was very competitive.
GTA Intermediate Invitational Round of 22 Match:
Dennis Cabanatan over Rafaelo Kazakov, 6-2, 6-3, to become the New # 25 Ranked Player in the Intermediate Division while advancing to The Round of 16 of The GTA Intermediate Invitational Tournament! Dennis: 3 Aces (1 in the 1st Set and 2 in the 2nd Set)! It was played on Center Court.
Samara’s Notes: I thank Chazz, Gen and Rafaelo for their very timely reporting.
We now head up to Wood-Ridge to first get the score from Anna before we head back to Cedar Grove for the report from Spin!
The Wood-Ridge Result:
2 out of 3 Sets Challenge Match:
Anna Mazur over Natalie Guzman, 6-1, 6-0, to successfully defend her # 3 Rank in the Women's Division! In the process, Guzman enters the division as the New # 16 Ranked Player! No Aces (apparently). We played from 6:20 to 6:55.
The Consequences: Now Guzman is also eligible for entry in the GTA Women's Championship Tournament which will no doubt be the greatest women's event in the history of the GTA! We now have 16 ladies in the Women’s Division which is the ideal amount of players for a single elimination tourney. But we still have one holdout…so we may need to try to qualify one more woman over the weekend. We shall see!
Samara's Notes: I thank Anna for sending in that score. We now turn this report over to Spin.
I was the first to arrive at CG last night around 7:30. There were about 6 cars in the parking lot. They were all for basketball. There was absolutely no one on the tennis courts. I was amazed!
I practiced my serve for about 20 minutes when I decided I would just go home. At that time, Natalia Sout pulled up and she was also in complete disbelief that it was just her and I at the courts. We hit for a good 15 to 20 minutes.
It was absolutely gorgeous out! At around 8pm or so, Moka Pathan pulled up and joined in the hitting and shared disbelief. He joined Nat to hit against me, but I instructed him to take the court by himself as he was the youngest and Natalia had already done a great job of running me around the court.
We decided to play Canadian Doubles but, after two service games (Moka and Nat), Tito showed up leading to the only One-Setter of the night. During our Doubles, Kris Srinivasan did a drive-by and joined us later. Also around 8:30, Dino Celis arrived and hit with Kris.
The Cedar Grove Result:
Dan Martinelli/Tito Castolo over Moka Pathan/Natalia Sout, 6-4! No Aces. We were up 5-2 and then Nat held her service game that saw 5 Match Points saved to bring it to 5-4 still in our favor! That one game alone took at least 15 or more minutes to complete with multiple Deuces! It was a fun contest and all involved seemed to really enjoy themselves.
Samara's Notes: I thank Spin for acting as the impromptu host of the Cedar Grove session and providing us with his report.
Sincerely,
Frank Samara
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