Lemmons, Poors, Spahrs and Parkhursts Win U. S. Father & Son Titles   
By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com

Dateline April 18th --- Staving off a gallant comeback bid by a former championship-winning opponent, Geordie Lemmon and his son B. G. conjured up a match-ending six-point spurt to emerge victorious in the Open division of the seventh annual U. S. Father & Son Doubles tournament, held as always in mid-town Manhattan. Their 15-10 15-9 11-15 15-8 final-round triumph over Scott and Will Simonton made the Lemmons the first team ever to win the 17-and-under flight one year and the Open draw the next, while also representing the second national doubles championship in the past few weeks for the younger Lemmon, a high-school junior, who last month combined with Andrew McGuinness to capture the U. S. National Junior Doubles in Wilmington.

   The top-seeded Simontons, who won this event in 2006 and were runners-up to Greg Park, a current top-12 on the ISDA pro doubles tour, and his father Steve in 2008 and 2009, recovered from their two-game deficit by pressuring the younger Lemmon into some late-game errors at the end of the third game and in moving from 0-5 and 4-9 to 8-9 in the fourth, on the strength of powerful forehand cross-courts from the left-handed Will and semi-lobs up the right wall by his father, a mid-1970’s standout at Bowdoin who pulled off a tightly-angled forehand reverse-corner to get his team to within one point at 8-9. But at this stage, with the momentum on the verge of swinging permanently in his opponents’ favor, B. G. Lemmon came up with a series of early-point winners --- an on-the-run forehand roll-corner, an overhead that dead-nicked in the front-left nick, another cross-court too low and shallow for Will Simonton to react --- and Geordie Lemmon, 21 years removed from the U. S. National Doubles title that he and Dave Proctor won in 1990, pulled off the shot of the match when he roamed deep into the back-right and fired a forehand three-wall nick, creating a match-ball that the Lemmons converted when, after a long all-court exchange, Scott Simonton tinned a forehand volley.
 
   This was a match that the Simontons might well have won had they carried their mid-fourth-game rally a few points further, but that ultimately was decided in large measure by the experience and racquet-work that Geordie Lemmon still possesses, which stabilized his team’s attack and contributed winning shots exactly when they were needed the most. Both teams had advanced in straight sets in their respective semifinals, with the Lemmons out-playing Simon Aldrich and his son Dillon while the Simontons were doing the same against their Wilmington co-denizens Bob Bolling and his son Hunter.
 
   This Open final was directly preceded by what was by a large margin the most dramatic contest of the weekend, a back-and-forth battle in the Century division pitting many-times (with many different partners) U. S. National Doubles Open finalist Tom Poor and son Morgan against the 2010 Century champs Jack Wyant Sr. and his son Jack Jr., a former mid-1990’s Princeton captain who is currently the men’s and women’s varsity coach at Penn. These two teams actually played twice in less than 20 hours, since the Century competition was set up as a three-team round-robin with the two top finishers slated to meet head-to-head in the final. The Poors won the round-robin match in three games, rallying from 11-14 down in the second to 17-14 and then racing through the 15-5 third. But it was clear from the start of the more important next-day rematch that the overnight adjustment that the Wyants decided upon --- with the younger Wyant covering the deep left behind his father, who would play further up in the court than he had done the day before --- was a wise one, as witness their 15-10 tally in the first game.

    The Poors responded by winning the second and seizing seemingly decisive 9-2 and 12-6 advantages in the third, only to drop seven straight points (three of them on unreturned beautifully placed lob serves) and see that game dissolve through their fingers by a count of 15-13. Again the Poors surged well ahead in the fourth game (11-7), again the Wyants beat them to 13 and won the first point of a “no-set” call, getting them to double-championship-point. Jack Wyant Jr. had been scoring frequently with backhand roll-corners and three-walls and at 14-13 he nailed another three-wall virtually into the front-right nick. This time Morgan Poor was --- barely --- able to scrape it back into play, seemingly a sitting duck given his position less than five feet from the front wall as the younger Wyant pounced upon the open ball and drilled a blast right at his waist. Remarkably, the younger Poor was able to reflex-volley both that shot and a second one back into play, whereupon Wyant tinned his next swing and vocally (and unsuccessfully) lobbied for the referee to rule that his three-wall had bounced a second time before the diving Morgan Poor had steered it back into play.

    After surviving that game when on the ensuing 14-all point Morgan Poor hit a narrow cross-court that the senior Wyant was unable to fend off, the Poors again jumped out to a substantial lead (6-2 and later 9-6) in the fifth and, for the third straight game, the Wyants moved past them at 10-9. Morgan Poor had committed several tins in his team’s mid-game slide, but he nailed a forehand volley that just cleared the tin to even the score at 10-all. The final quintet of points, all of which landed in the Poor column, went swiftly: a Morgan Poor shallow forehand cross-court winner, two Wyant tins, the second when Jack Sr. hit a serve-return over the front-wall boundary, and finally a pair of Tom Poor front-court winners, the first a tidy forehand cross-drop into the front-left nick and the second a mis-hit intended backhand reverse-corner that instead found a front-right nick to conclude an exciting 75 minutes of undulating and entertaining action.

   The two younger age-group competitions went in more routine fashion, with Chris Spahr, the longtime head pro at the University Club Of Boston, and his precocious son Carson winning the 17-and-under flight with an overtime-in-the-third final-round win over Brian Walsh and his son Michael, while in the 15-and-under final, Charlie Parkhurst, the No. 1 player at the Princeton Club of New York in the MSRA hardball leagues of the early-1990’s, and his son Henry prevailed over Alan Ripka and his son Mason in four well-played games. The Spahrs, winners the three prior years in the 13-and-under division, would have been age-eligible to again enter the 13’s draw (in which Ray Pepi and his son William won in three over Harry Curtis and son Samuel) but chose instead to skip over the 15’s event and compete in the 17’s, as mentioned, which makes their advance to the winner’s circle all the more remarkable. Thirty teams in total participated in this year’s tournament, which was sponsored by Harrow, ably directed for the second straight year by Racquet & Tennis Club pro Jason Hicks and co-chaired, as has been the case since the event’s inception in 2005, by Simon Aldrich and Morris Clothier.

Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
 
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