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.
