By Rob Whitehouse
Senior Challenge Recap
The Racquet Club of Philadelphia was proud to host the Senior Challenge last weekend. We had 21 players enter the event, including a few “youngsters” who helped make up a combined age of 115 years!
The matches were played using a 75% handicap, which led to plenty of competitive and exciting matches throughout the weekend.
The Combined Age Division created some great and different matchups and was a terrific way to get some of our newer seniors involved in competitive matches.Allen Whittemore, Eric Levine, Phil Straus, and Andrew Brown were all first-time players in the Senior Challenge. There were several exciting 10–9 battlesthroughout the draw, with Halsey Spruance and Paul Bolster coming through on the top side of the draw.
Dick Tanfield teamed up with younger partner Alex Matulas, and the combination paid off. Matulas covered a tremendous amount of court and came up with some great movement gets, while Tanfield finished off a number of long rallies with his superb length, which resulted in them
The Main Draw, where all players had to be over 50 years old, featured nine teams.
Halsey Spruance and Alex Jamieson got off to a great start, picking up two tough wins on their way to the finals. They first defeated Dick Tanfield and Paul Bolster10–6, followed by another solid 10–6 victory over Alex Dean and Rob Whitehouse to earn their spot in the championship match.
On the other side of the draw, Bill Barker and Anders Cohen had a real tussle in their first-round match against Guy Elzey and Alec Monaghan, scraping out a 10–7victory. Bill and Anders settled in and saw the ball much better in their semifinal, coming away with a strong win over Kenny Soffer and Eric Levine.
That set up a great final between Spruance & Jamieson and Barker & Cohen.
Spruance and Jamieson had been playing steady, confident Court Tennis all weekend and continued that momentum in the final. Halsey Spruance was on fire with hitting the grille, helping his team pull out a hard-fought 10–8 victory over Bill Barker and Anders Cohen to capture the Senior Challenge title!
Congratulations to Halsey and Alex, and a big thank you to everyone who came out and made the weekend such a fun and competitive event. It was great to see so many players enjoying the competition and keeping the spirit of the Senior Challenge alive at RCOP.
