AAACTA Advantage
 News from the Ann Arbor Area Community Tennis Association           November 2010

City Tournament 2010
It was a damn close run thing
Letter from AAACTA President


Local Tennis Aficionados,

As winter closes in with our season tightly wrapped, I instinctively get reflective. For me, this is more clinical, along the lines of questioning what happened, than sentimental. I keep trying to put my finger on it.

 

That summer is gifted I take for granted. It alone stands out as the one season in which we can expect to conduct our various outdoor festivals, fairs, events, shows. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that summer possesses the Fatal Gift - cited below in a translation from a famous sonnet.

 

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past,
On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame,
And annals graved in characters of flame

 

Note the transition. It's critical. The season begins. Events occur. The season ends. What is left is simply a matter of record. We should be so lucky as to have our on-court exploits "graved in characters of flame" - though I've tried it before with some of my more deserving playoff teams. No, generally, everything wears out, breaks and is replaced. We do it again every year. This has been true of the City Tourney for 91 years now - and will continue, so long as we have our way.

 

Those of you familiar with Alec Waugh, who wrote a book called The Fatal Gift, might, if I recall it correctly, consider that it's not so much the beauty as the expectation that's so fatal. So it is with tennis, certainly. Some of you may be familiar with another tome called Infinite Jest. The late David Foster Wallace had - and you can ask one of our local pros if you doubt me - some familiarity with the world of competitive junior tennis. He carefully describes the tension of maintaining the right level of expectation for match play - wanting it, but not wanting it too much.

 

In the end we pocket such concerns and settle it "out there" in the heat and dust. That's exactly what we did during the final two events of the series; the Junior and Adult Doubles Tournaments.

 

For my part, I have no regrets. My partner and I lost to the eventual champions in our bracket. My partner's concession was that, "maybe they were just better than us." That I can only concede, at least on that given day. Besides, as the Black Knight said, 'Tis but a scratch....

 

The rest of The Summer Series went swimmingly, and, given the heat, you can take that literally.  

  • Press coverage was fabulous, thanks in part to the fact that, for the first time ever, we had real, live embedded reporters playing in one of the events.  
  • Promotional properties - graphics, posters, t-shirts, staff shirts, internet presence - were better than ever, thanks, largely, to keenly attuned sponsors, board members, and volunteers.
  • Turnout was very close to the prior year's for most events, ensuring that, given the big growth in the singles event, overall turnout was up.
  • We smoothly integrated new personnel into critical Site Director and TDM roles.
  • We added the infrastructure needed to evaluate comparative club data - stay tuned for why this might be important.
  • We improved our process for ensuring competitive brackets.

 

For all who played or otherwise supported The Summer Series, I want to again give my thanks. We'll be back, perhaps this winter, with a reprise. Until then, remember Wellington's misquoted summation of Waterloo - and know that you've tasted perilous competition:

 

"It was a damn close run thing"

What he actually said was:

"It has been a damn nice thing - the nearest run thing you ever saw..."


He used nice in the archaic meaning of "careful or precise" and not the modern "attractive or agreeable" or the even more archaic meaning of "foolish". I don't need to tell you that because you, who've known a life that dilates the milliseconds of fuzzy yellow ball contacting net tape into a veritable eternity, know damn well what he meant.


What I do need to tell you is that you did a nice job. Thanks again.



Patrick J. Lee
AAACTA President