DB Racquet Club

Love to see you today at Creek's 19th at Turkey Creek Golf Club noon to 3. Play a round, have some Easter buffet, and enjoy a few gospel tunes in His honor.

Sad news. We all remember her as a great advocate for local tennis, a fine administrator, and good friend. I didn't not realize her extensive international background.

Once again, Perfessor Eddy returns to Creeks 19th in the Turkey Creek Golf Club from noon to 3 tomorrow (Dec 1). Its supposed to warm up nicely by then and just in time for a tasty brunch. I'll premiere two new songs that you will love.

One ticket for tomorrow's football game. Excellent seats lower level section 22 row 17. Only $50. PM Ed Kellerman. First one to respond takes it.

tonight more fun and excitement as Perfessor Eddy plays Creeks 19th from 6-9PM. We'll probably be inside if it's too cool.

Hope to see you all on Sunday as the weather cools down and the tunes heat up!

Though much of our round robin got rained out, "the sun gonna shine in my backdoor someday".

This is from my hometown FB site, Douglaston Memories. On consecutive streets were the Kellermans, the McEnroes, the Lynches, and the Carillos. I used to commute with Mark McEnroe on the LIRR into Manhattan. Macs house had the most beautiful blue lights on their Christmas blue spruces. It is recalled that Richard Lynch never lost a junior match, he was that good. Ed

"Tennis in New York is with Peter Lattman.
September 10, 2013 ·
He was a tennis prodigy from an Irish Catholic family in Douglaston Manor, a leafy neighborhood in Queens. A gifted athlete, he swayed back and forth at the baseline before attacking the net behind a wicked left-handed serve. He played with a wooden Dunlop racket, wore Sergio Tacchini clothes and gracefully moved around the court in Nike shoes.
I’m talking about Rich Lynch, the No. 1 player in the Eastern Tennis Association’s boys 10 and under division in 1981.
That description, of course, also fits John McEnroe, who that same year, at 22, won his third consecutive United States Open. He was No. 1 in the world.

McEnroe and Lynch grew up on Manor Road, a street cutting through the center of Douglaston Manor, a hamlet of 600 homes on Little Neck Bay. They learned to play on the courts at the Douglaston Club, a tennis-and-pool hangout in the middle of the neighborhood. John and his two brothers, Mark and Patrick, would hit thousands of practice balls against the club backboard, sending more than a few into the Lynch’s yard, which was right over the wall.

McEnroe’s ascent to the top of the tennis world was a part of New York City sports history that, in retrospect, seems like a fluke. When he won his first United States Open in 1979, McEnroe faced off in the final against Vitas Gerulaitis, the son of Lithuanian immigrants and a product of Howard Beach, Queens.
“It isn’t every day that two players who live 10 minutes from the Open reach the final,” McEnroe said at the time. “New Yorkers should appreciate this. It may never happen again.”
It hasn’t. Not even close. Since McEnroe, the highest-ranked professional tennis player from the five boroughs is his younger brother Patrick, who in 1995 peaked at No. 28 in the world.
Mary Carillo also grew up in Douglaston Manor, where her parents still live. She and McEnroe won the 1977 French Open mixed doubles championship.

“It was a magical time,” said Carillo, 54, who is now a CBS Sports analyst.

She remembers when she first met Rich Lynch. It was the summer of 1981. McEnroe had just returned to New York after winning his first Wimbledon. They were hanging out in McEnroe’s kitchen when Mrs. McEnroe walked in accompanied by a little kid carrying only a pencil and a piece of paper.

Lynch, a shy boy, did not speak. He gravely handed the pencil and paper to McEnroe, who signed his name. Not a single word was exchanged. Lynch turned around, walked out of the front door and headed back to his house.
“John and I just looked at each other and started giggling,” Carillo said.

I was also a product of Queens, sort of. My mother grew up in Bayside; my father, Forest Hills. They met at T.G.I. Friday’s on First Avenue in Manhattan in the late 1960s , married, had children, and moved to Roslyn, not far from Douglaston Manor, in 1972.

Everyone played tennis back then, so my family took it up. After I showed some promise, my parents enrolled me at the Port Washington Tennis Academy, the junior program across the Queens-Long Island border that had spawned McEnroe and Gerulaitis.

It was there I met Lynch, who at 10 was far better and bigger than the rest of us. He, too, had hit thousands of balls against the Douglaston Club backboard, imitating McEnroe, the best player in the neighborhood.

McEnroe’s coach, Tony Palofax, a former Davis Cup star from Mexico, recognized Lynch’s potential and took him under his wing. He created a mini-McEnroe.

“Rich was the only one who could serve and volley, while the rest of us were trying to outlast each other from the baseline,” said Pablo Sosa, the No. 2-ranked player in the boys 10s and now a personal-injury lawyer in the Bronx.

“He had the greatest hands, the greatest angles, just like Mac.”
Lynch was also blessed with crack athletic genes. His father, Dick Lynch, was a former Giants football star and their longtime radio broadcaster. His mother, Roz, was a former flight attendant and Miss Pennsylvania. Rich was the fifth of their six children.
His game differed from McEnroe’s in two ways. In contrast to McEnroe’s laconic one-handed backhand, Lynch hit a driving two-fisted shot reminiscent of Jimmy Connors’s.

He was also a gentleman on the court. Today, the Eastern section of the United States Tennis Association has a sportsmanship award named after Lynch. There isn’t one named after McEnroe.
Born four days apart, Rich and I grew up together on the junior circuit. Our parents schlepped us to tournaments all over New York and New Jersey. My dad, a lifelong Giants fan, was giddy when he realized he would be watching our matches in the gallery with his new friend Dick Lynch.

My memory is vague, but we probably faced off about a half-dozen times. What isn’t vague is that I always got crushed. An old junior tennis magazine documents how he ran through the competition at a 1981 tournament, dropping just 10 games in his first three matches before shellacking me, 6-1, 6-0, in the final.
Throughout the juniors, in our age group, Lynch was perennially No. 1 in the region and consistently ranked among the top juniors nationally.

Lynch was our McEnroe, but, in the end, he would not be the next McEnroe.

His oldest sister, Jennifer Lynch, remembers accompanying him to a tournament in California when he was a teenager. He lost to Michael Chang, who a few years later went on to win the French Open. On the other side of the draw were the future Grand Slam champions Andre Agassi and Jim Courier.

“As Rich got older, you began to notice at the nationals that the competition was getting tougher,” said Jennifer, now a managing director at Wells Fargo Securities in Manhattan.

Lynch received an athletic scholarship to South Carolina. Around that time, he also began having back problems. After a solid freshman season, he had spinal fusion surgery. Persistent pain prevented him from playing singles again. He was resigned to doubles and closed out his tennis career quietly.

He found his way to Wall Street, following in the footsteps of his father, who worked as a bond salesman when he was not announcing Giants games.

Lynch took a job selling corporate debt at Euro Brokers. He thrived in the team-oriented, competitive environment of a trading floor.

He married Christina Mackell, his grammar school classmate who also came from a big Douglaston family. They moved to Bedford Hills, in Westchester County, and began a family.
Lynch, 30, was on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower when a plane struck the building. His wife and sister had spoken to him after a jet hit the north tower. They prayed that he had left his desk, but he had instead stuck around.
“He stayed behind to answer the phones, to be there for his clients,” said John Lynch, his younger brother and a former wide receiver at Notre Dame.

“He was being a team player, the responsible kid he always was.”
McEnroe, of course, went on to win seven Grand Slam singles titles and earned the right to be counted among the best ever. He has six children across two marriages, his first to an actress, the second to a musician. And McEnroe, the sport’s enfant terrible, has somewhat improbably become its elder statesman. He will be, as a television analyst, in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Sunday for the women’s final.

Lynch and I had lost touch, but in our 20s, we would bump into each other — at a bar on Second Avenue, in the stands at a Giants game, and yes, on the grounds of the Open.
Maybe it’s the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. Maybe it’s these two weeks when the world’s top players light up Flushing Meadows. Maybe it’s that my children are the age I was when I met him. But I’ve been thinking about Lynch lately, and appreciating anew that I won’t run into him anymore.

Someday, though, I hope to run into his only child, Olivia, who was just 15 months old when he died. Olivia, now 11, lives in Douglaston Manor and plays on the Eastern junior tennis circuit. A ringer for her dad, she’s supposed to have some serious game. This summer, she began training at a new elite junior program on Randalls Island — the John McEnroe Tennis Academy."

The sun's gonna shine in my back door someday.

Never too early to start working that forehand.

Check out long time members, John and Giles on TV20.

Dry cleaning business re-opens with a little assistance On The Spot Dry Cleaners had to close down after losing nearly 75 percent of their revenues, but with the help of a Paycheck Protection Program loan, they're back up and running.