by Ivan Ronaldson
The USCTA 50+ Level Championship for the Wharton Cup was held at Westwood Country Club from January 24th-26th. With 19 entries, every US club was represented by at least one player. It was the juniors who shone brightest. 16-year-old Aidan Bae (Westwood) took out #1 seed Mike Geiger (Westwood) as a packed dedans and Martin room looked on. Geiger, who’d played on the Men’s Tennis Tour, looked flabbergasted after losing the 11th game of the 1st set. “What about the tiebreaker?” he exclaimed. Defending chase half a yard at three games- all in the second set, the ball hit the penthouse above his head, ballooned up and was all set to land on chase five before Mike caught it cleanly on his racket (stroke). “We’ve all been there ….. once.” said a dozen of his supporters in the galleries. ‘Welcome to the club”. Aidan wins that semi 6-5 6-3.
In the bottom half of the draw, Jonah Serotta scraped by hometown favorite and winner of the 2024 Westwood handicap 50+ level tournament, Matt Haas. 15-year-old Jonah has only been playing for three or four months. His background in Squash and Tennis, combined with plenty of lessons from world #2, John Lumley, has catapulted him into the Philly limelight. Awaiting him in the semi-final was #2 seed, 12-year-old Kurt Mueller from Tuxedo. Kurt had been ill during his round of 16 and quarter-final matches but somehow managed to keep enough chicken nuggets down to give him the energy necessary to sneak by Serotta 6-3 4-6 6-5.
The final was a battle of two opposing styles: Hard-hitting Aidan and his awesome volley against the fleet-footed, more experienced Kurt. Despite having the home court and home crowd advantage, Aidan struggled too often with the back wall. Mueller won 6-3, 6-4. That’s the last we’ll see of them in the Wharton Cup. Onward!
In the Consolation final, Matt Haas defeated Jeremy Booth 10-2.
