Out of Country for 3 Weeks and not one message?

Damn, I feel hurt in the apparent lack of interest in either this site or tournament tennis in general. Go out of country for 3 weeks and no one posts a single message on the site. Well, I am back and maybe we can see some discussion again.

This weekend....Austin....Master's Cup.

Some interesting groupings in the round robins, especially 4.5.

Here is my personal thoughts on each of 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0.

I assume Kern will not have any problem handling his group and then beating Janek in the finals of 4.0

The real finals of 4.5 will occur in round robin action as Reader and Dibua are in the same group. The winner of that one should win the tournament but as we have already seen, Reader cannot be counted on to show up for matches (even ones that would have been incredibly lop-sided in his favor...no offence Scott). So for that reason, I hope Dibua wins though I really see that match as a toss-up as both of those guys are incredibly talented though they have completely different games and Dibua has about 50X fitness advantage over Thomas Reefer. The other group is somewhat interesting as Greg has beaten Jochen but lost to Trautman and hasn't played Casas. Jochen has beaten both Casas (2X) and Trautman but has lost to Greg. Casas...don't see it happening. Problem for either Greg or Jochen is that Trautman is unlikely to show up for his other matches if he loses his first one. For sake of needing a body, I will plug Greg into the finals and then predict he will get rolled by either Dibua or Reader.

Finally, 5.0.... I think it will be close between Wescoupe and Hunckler from one group and Hilderbrand and Gound in the other. For the finals, I will go with the winner of the Hunckler/Wescoupe over Gound in the finals.

Comment away...

Rain spoils fun...but not as much as the guy at the desk.

First all, sorry to all who got short changed by the bad weather as there ended up being a lot of walkover semis and finals and of course consolation was cancelled.

Second, what is with the guy behind the desk at Lee Leclear? He is the rudest tournament volunteer I have ever dealt with in many, many year of playing tennis around the state. HTA should think about how it looks when you have someone being rude to basically every player or parent that approaches the desk. Not exactly good word of mouth to get other out of towners to come in to play Fall Fest.

Finally, congrats to all the winners and finalists, including:

Femi Thomas, who beat Will Taylor in the Open Finals
Odion Dibua, who beat Greg Schmucker in the 4.5 Finals
Brian Goldberg, who beat someone to win the 4.0 Finals

Maybe Brian would have gotten more poll votes if the tourney had happened last weekend.

Unfortunately, the 4.5 doubles fell apart at the end, as the matchup between Dibua/Moser and Kallus/Tass never materialized, I assume due to the weather pushing things over to Monday. Still curious as to whether there was a falling out between Kallus and Moser since those guys had been playing as a team all year and signed up with different partners. Plus, last I looked, neither had signed up yet for the master's cup. Anyone know anything?

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Sorry for lack of new posts, been way too busy with non-tennis life. Draws are out for Fall Fest and I am sure there is plenty worthy of note. Hopefully I will find time to really take a look at it. For now, I will just settle for predicting that Odion Dibua will run away with the 4.5 singles and as I have said repeatedly, I don't get why this guy is playing 4.5. But I digress... Anyway, feel free to discuss away and make predictions and what not. Hopefully, I will also get a chance to come up with another riveting poll question as your votes are the only way I have to see how many people are bothering to visit this site. Looks like it is a number somewhere in the mid-teens. Look at Google, Yahoo, Myspace, etc.!