Doubles: Addison West And Will Hartigan Capture Silver Racquet Crown   
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline November 9th --- Trailing 1-0, 13-11, Addison West and Will Hartigan conjured up an electrifying four-point burst that both evened the match score and, more importantly, gave them a level of momentum that they never relinquished en route to defeating second seeds Chris Callis and Dylan Patterson 7-15, 15-13, 15-8, 15-9 Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 23rd annual Silver Racquet Invitational, hosted as always by the Racquet & Tennis Club in mid-town Manhattan. It was the second Silver Racquet title for West, who also took this event with Whitten Morris four years ago, and the second tournament win for the West/Hartigan pairing, which had previously captured the William White trophy 10 months ago at the Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia.

   Today’s match was bisected precisely --- on the 49th point of the 97 that were played --- on the shot of the day, which came at 13-all in that pivotal second game. Callis and Patterson, straight-set semifinal winners this morning over former Trinity College teammates Randy Lim and Travis Judson, had both out-positioned and handily out-executed West and Hartigan throughout the first game and for most of the second. Patterson was rock-solid on the right wall, more than holding his own in his cross-court battle with West, and scoring on tight  reverse-corners and shallow cross-drops, while his partner Callis, the only one of the dozen players entered in both this event and the Big Apple Open SDA pro tournament several blocks northwest at the New York Athletic Club who was still alive in both draws coming into Sunday, was smoothly gliding to everything that was hit and controlling the play with his wall-clinging lobs up the left side, his fearless and aggressive volleying and the drop-shot winners he was slipping in to both front corners whenever an opening arose.

   For their part, West and Hartigan, who were back on court for the final only 90 minutes after their 3-0 semis win over the No. 1 seeds (and one of the top 10 teams on the SDA pro doubles circuit) Jacques Swanepoel and Shaun Johnstone, were not quite matching their opponents’ energy level and seemed about to go down two games to love. But after Hartigan had lashed two winning drives to even the second game at 13-all, he ended the ensuing lengthy all-court rally by pulling off a backhand Philadelphia boast that stayed too glued to the back wall for Callis to excavate it into play, a spectacular salvo that gave his team a 14-13 lead and with it a game-ball that Hartigan promptly converted by blasting a cross-court past Callis, his fourth winner on as many points.

   Patterson then hit three straight front-court winners to start the third game, but West and Hartigan won seven of the next eight points and closed out that game with a flurry of three-wall nicks and a relentless attack that gradually drew some errors as well. In that game and the subsequent fourth (in which West/Hartigan went from 2-3 to 8-3 and later from 10-8 to 14-8), the eventual champs were able to string together a series of significant mini-runs that ultimately spelled the difference. Callis and Patterson never seemed out of it until the very end of the last game, but there were just enough small but costly fissures in their production (especially the three consecutive tins that they committed after rallying from 5-10 to 8-10 in the fourth game) to stymie their attempts to stage a comeback. At 8-14, Patterson hit a backhand drop-shot winner from the back wall, but on the ensuing point he was unable to handle a sharply-angled West cross-court on the final exchange of the day.

   At least it was the final exchange for Patterson, Hartigan and West. Less than two hours after the last ball was struck, Callis was teaming up, this time as a right-wall player, with Racquet and Tennis head pro (and Silver Racquet tournament chairman) Manek Mathur in the Big Apple Open semis, which they won in four games over Viktor Berg and Hamed Anvari to qualify for this evening’s final against top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould. It is a testament to both Callis’s staying power and the strength of the Silver Racquet draw that he has already advanced at least as far in the SDA pro tournament as he did in the Silver Racquet competition.

2015 Silver Racquet draw:

Rd of 16: Jacques Swanepoel/Shaun Johnstone bye; Reed Endresen/Will Broadbent d. Bobby Burns/Jordan Greenberg, 3-2; Will Newnham/Eric Bedell d. Yasser El Halaby/Amr Khalifa, 3-2; Addison West/Will Hartigan d. Joseph Purrazzella/Rob Dinerman, 3-0; Randy Lim/Travis Judson d Tim Wyant/Dave Barry, 3-0; James Stout/Ben Stein d. Brad Hathaway/Matthew McAndrew, 3-0; Josh Schwartz/Robby Berner d. Carl Baglio/Parth Sharma, 3-1; Chris Callis/Dylan Patterson d. Andrew Merrill/Scott Merrill, 3-0.

Quarterfinals: Swanepoel/Johnstone d. Endresen/Broadbent, 3-0; West/Hartigan d. Newnham/Bedell, 3-0; Lim/Judson d. Stout/Stein, 0-1, retired (Stout knee injury); Callis/Patterson d. Schwartz/Berner, 3-0.

Semifinals: West/Hartigan d. Swanepoel/Johnstone, 3-0; Callis/Patterson d. Lim/Judson, 3-0.

Final: West/Hartigan d. Callis/Patterson, 3-1