Mark Keil commentates on his experience playing this past week’s ATP event in Washington D.C. Playing D.C. is one of the final straws on the road to the US Open. The heat is bearable only due to the fact that the final Grand Slam tournament of the year is soon approaching. I played with the All-American out of Ole Miss Dave Randall in 1992. We lost to Charles Beckman and Brod Dyke in the first round. Beckman was a Louisville product, who had a stellar collegiate career at Texas . His shots were deceiving in that he grunted so loud while making contact with the ball, but its velocity was so soft that it made you swing at the ball early. His partner from Adelaide was a wily lefty veteran. My buddy T.J. Middleton had a few contacts at the White House during the Clinton administration, and we went there and had a hit on the White House tennis court. We received a nice tour of the cabinet meeting room, and it was a hair-raising experience.
I met a future brief girlfriend there, Stacey Certner. She was one of the best looking Jewish girls I ever dated. She would visit me at my home base in Tampa , and I really liked her, but, she dumped me. I think it was because of the tale a former player from Albuquerque ‘s encounter he had on a flight. David Livingston met a female in the first class section of a domestic flight. She saw his tennis racquet bag, and asked him if he was a pro. He said yes, indeed he was, and she asked him his ranking. At the time he was ranked about No. 285 in the world, but rising steadily. He decided to fib a bit, and told her he was ranked 68. She quickly replied, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get better,” and she quickly went back to reading Vogue, ignoring him the whole flight. I believe Stacey bailed on me because I wasn’t that highly ranked, or because I sent her a whole package of pictures of myself, and then she never called me again.
The next year I played with the best doubles player I have ever played with: Christo Van Rensburg. He was a great doubles tactician, and had a great chip backhand lob return. We beat the team of Axel Finnberg(Ger)/Marcus Zoecke(FRG), and the American duo Mike Briggs/Brett Garnett. Briggs was an unbelievable break dancer, who came out of the great tennis program at UC Irvine. Mr. Garnett was a calm southerner until provoked, with a hellacious kick serve. We lost to Patrick McEnroe and Richey Reneberg 6-2, 6-3.
My final year of playing there in 1999, I teamed up with Notre Dame’s finest tennis player ever David DiLucia. He was voted athlete of the year there, even over the All American football player Raghib Ismail. We lost early in the week to Mikael Hill and Scott Humphries. This event in the nation’s capital is a great introduction to the world’s biggest sporting event.
Take care, and hit ’em deep.
Dave Randall
Wimbledon Memories
Qualifying at Wimbledon is a great experience and I remember walking through those pearly gates in the early 1990’s. The two times I played singles there I drew Nick Brown and Mark Petchey, both of England.
Nick beat me in straights and went onto upset Goran Ivanisevic in the next round. I would have loved to have played a top player, but I drew the local boys each time. I was suppose to play Mark on the first Monday, and it rained all week and I didn’t play until Friday. Petchey was used to it but it was severe torture for me. It would be like having to choose to either marry Maria Sharapova or Helena Christensen.
The seeded players at Wimbledon get a special locker room, while the other participants would be regulated to the second one close to the road. You could open up the window and peer out and watch all the people come in. I remember Derrick Rostagno, the cool southern Californian who was seeded, choose to keep his belongings with the plebians rather than the seeded players locker room.
I remember that my wife accompanied me to Wimbledon often. The Austrian player Horst Skoff (who recently passed away) used to always hit on her, so I thought if he liked her, she couldn’t be that bad. She was becoming a dentist in Stockholm, and it was nice to have her come along with me to these events. I played mixed doubles with Lori McNeil and we got to play Grant Connell and a young Lindsay Davenport on Centre Court. We got waxed, and I was again a nervous dude.
I played doubles with Dave Randall, and we had some tough matches. I never got past the round of sixteens in doubles at a major. It irks me in that it is always good to say you got to the “quarters” of a slam. Playing at Wimbledon always reminded me of my upbringing in Albuquerque, where Mike Velesquez would beat me in the state high school finals my junior and senior year. He wore shades once when he beat me before wearing shades was in style.
Overall, there is nothing like competing at The Championships, and one must go and check it out.
Take care,
The Journeyman
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The Journeyman: Vive La France
The French Open is coming upon us, and that is a beautiful thing. I think it is the second hardest major tournament to win after the US Open – being in shape is a must.
The player’s receive a per diem, so many stay in various hotels or apartments around the city, instead of the usual main player residence. I played doubles a few times there, and just like my career, had mediocre results. In ’92 and ’93, I partnered with Dave Randall – the best player ever to come out of Missisippi.
He used to play the deuce side with me, and he would return serve by holding the racket like he was riding a motorcycle, the racket being parallel to the net. He was a nice church going fella, and we broke into the doubles ranks together. Unlike now, where a player’s singles ranking can be used to gain entry into the 64 team draw, it was strictly done by a player’s individual doubles ranking. While Dave was going to bed early, you could catch me a few times at the La Banduche nightclub some evenings.
It was a fun place to go, always packed with girls who were in magazines around the world.
The Saturday before the tourney would start, they would use to have the Bennie Berthet Day. This was when players would play a practice set against each other, to get used to the courts. It was free of charge, and a lot of kids would show up and watch the pros play. I use to play the legendary Mansour Bahrami in an exhibition. When I played him, I always felt like I was the Washington Generals playing against the Harlem Globetrotters.
The tournament used to have a great deal for the players, where we could eat for free at the Hard Rock Cafe by showing our player badge. I must admit I ate a lot of burger’s that week.
The first week of a Grand Slam is always packed with people – I rarely made it to the second week so I wouldn’t know what the feeling was like being in an empty lockerroom. We would tune up our games before our matches at the Racing Club of Paris – a beautiful club nestled in the heart of the city. The locker room was cool in that they had a loft where they have TVs lined up next to each other showing the matches on every court. It was great to sit there and watch the action, but it could be very draining. Roland Garros is a historic tennis palace, and I miss playing there tremendously.
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