By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
In an effort to provide more competitive playing opportunities for tennis players in Vero Beach, Florida, I have been hosting Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) match play events this summer at the Vero Beach Tennis & Fitness Club at Timber Ridge. I have been hosting these every Friday at 4:30 pm until about 7 pm and the cost for the summer events is a reasonable $20 per player.
As the promoter of these events, I always immediately sign in to be a competitor but I am mainly a place holder and act as a substitute in case there are an odd number of players, or someone is late, no shows or doesn’t want to play anymore. The format is simple – I assign each player at least two singles matches – one traditional set with a tie-breaker at 6-6 and no-ad scoring. If the player wants to play a third match, we match the player up for a third match. Some players only want to play two matches.
At our Friday, July 25 event, we had 10 players signed up (which is about a third of our normal weekly attendance – a lot folks must have been on vacation). However, five of these players had UTRs between 5.00 and 7.04 (including myself) and five had UTRs from 2.0 to 2.52. The object of these events is to provide competitive match play with players with a similar UTR. You don’t want to pay money and play a player who is not up to your level of play, for the most part. You want to have a good match so you can improve! All the match play data, whether it is a close match with someone with a similar UTR or a one-sided match against a much higher or much lower rated player, helps to accurately determine your rating.
So in this Friday scenario, I “took one of the team” and inserted myself into the rotation of lower-rated players to complete an even number of players near that UTR and then the other four players with the higher UTRs could play against each other and have some good competitive matches too. While I am only semi-competitive these days, I do pay attention to my UTR rating, which is a 6.55 in singles. Playing and recording official verified matches against players with 2.0 and 2.52 ratings was not going to improve my rating. I could only go down for the most part and, as most people know with UTR matches, even if you lose a game to a much lower rated player, your UTR can suffer. I had a mindset that while I was going to provide some “customer service” tennis to allow my lesser rated opponents to play, I was going to at least prevent them from winning a game if I could so it wouldn’t hurt my UTR, or give my opponents an inflated UTR, which would also be disingenuous.
My first match was against Adam Neira, a very enthusiastic 31-year-old local player who volunteers for our annual Vero Beach USTA Pro Circuit “Futures” event, the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships, and who also runs a local tennis-playing group called the Indian River Tennis Club. Adam doesn’t’ have a UTR rating but he was estimated at between 1.00 and 3.00. Adam, who is 25 years my junior, was able to genuinely hold serve once on me and I won the set 6-1. I told Adam that his UTR will probably go up by getting a game off of me. I didn’t play completely full stop intense tennis, but I certainly didn’t play to lose and didn’t play to lose a game.
The temperatures were still in the 90s in the late afternoon and the sun was blaring in a cloudless sky. I next scheduled myself against Bill Lain from nearby Sebastian, Florida, who is an inspiring 82-year-old player who said to me that he loves these UTR events that I run as there aren’t any competitions for players of his age or ability in the area in the summer and he wants to keep his game in shape to take on other 80-somethings in the winter months in Florida. Bill has a 2.52 UTR rating, which shot up from a 2.0 when I matched him against 11-year-old Avery Higdon (a 1.94 UTR) in a previous UTR Match Play event that I documented in a fun video here: https://youtu.be/Hquih-HGKRM?si=bkDVOCuKMvrAY2dr
I was a little tired and hot after my set with Adam and I knew Bill is a steady player so I kind of dreaded going out there in the uncomfortable conditions. That was what was on the forefront of my mind when we started to play. I just kicked first serves into Bill in our first game, a little softer than I usually do when I play competitively, and gave him some decent balls to hit back. I was not hitting my knife slices or my forehand top spin drives like I usually do. I just gave him a medium pace ball and concentrated on not missing while I lamented to myself at how hot and uncomfortable it was that day.
After a combination of a few winners and few errors from Bill, I was up 3-0. When I got to 0-30 on Bill’s serve in the next game, I realized….I had yet to lose a point. I just continued to play steady for the most part – customer service tennis – and Bill lost the points mostly on unforced or forced errors. I won the next two points and I was up 4-0 without losing a point.
Probably the most difficult thing to do in tennis is to win a “Golden Set” – which is winning a set without losing a point – 24 straight points. It’s only happened twice on record in professional tennis – by American Bill Scanlon in 1983 in a win over Marcos Hocevar of Brazil at the WCT Gold Coast Cup in Delray Beach, Florida and by Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan in a third-round 6-0, 6-4 win at Wimbledon over Sara Errani of Italy in 2012. This is like a no-hitter in baseball or a perfect game. Or like a hole-in-one in golf. I have a few times gone into a fun match with the mindset of trying to win a golden set – usually with a smart-ass young kid who thinks they can beat me. But, always I miss a forehand wide or hit a double-fault or something else happens when I let my concentration wane. Perfection is hard!
I thought about some of the points I had won so far. I hit a few balls that landed close to or on the line, or others that barely skimmed to the top of the net. I had a bit of luck and perhaps because I wasn’t thinking about trying to win a golden set was part of the reason why I was more than half way to winning one.
Serving at 4-0, 15-0, I missed a first serve. It is the first serve I missed in the set. I was thinking more about the golden set than about my serve and just getting a good toss and kicking my serve in. “I better not double fault,” I said to myself. I didn’t and Bill missed the return. After a forehand winner from me and another error from Bill, I was up 5-0. I had won 20 straight points.
As mean as it would be to win a golden set against an 82-year-old man, I had to go for the golden set. This opportunity may never come again. I was a little nervous and on the first point of the next game, with Bill serving and I hit a ball that for sure was going to go long. Bill, however, tried to volley it and hit it in the net. You have to have a little luck right?
Bill missed a groundstroke on the next point. It was the 22nd straight point I had won. I was two points from a golden set! I felt like if I just hit my normal groundstrokes and didn’t make a mistake, I could finish this.
On the next point, we exchanged a few groundstrokes before Bill hit a high and deep ball that landed near the baseline. I played it safe and just lobbed a forehand back in the court. But Bill came forward and hit the ball out of the air and into the open court on my backhand side. I hustled to get the ball…I knew it was going to be a struggle. I just had to get the ball back to keep my hopes alive. I barely got to the ball, but didn’t hit it cleanly and the ball landed softly in the net. My dream was over.
I actually didn’t feel that bad because the good guy in me didn’t really want to win a golden set against an 82-year-old guy in an event I was organizing, right? I’m all about storytelling and, either way, this was going to be a fun story to tell. I won the next two points to finish off the 6-0 set win. I won 24 total points and lost one. Bill had a great attitude about the match as I could tell he appreciated playing against a much better player.
Who knows if I will get another chance to win a golden set. Perfection is something we should all strive for but rarely is it achieved.
To join my “Randy Walker Tennis” group on the UTR platform, click here https://app.utrsports.net/clubs/3231
