Falmouth Men's Tennis Team Remaining Positive After Home-Opener Loss
The Falmouth Men’s Tennis Team hosted its first at-home match of the season on Saturday, October 30, and, although the record book may not reflect it, team captain Dave Sugar thinks they may be off to their best start yet.
“Matches on courts one and two went down to just a few points to determine the winner,” Mr. Sugar said. “We ended up on the short side, unfortunately. But looking at those scores from courts one and two you can see that we competed down to the last second on both courts against very, very strong competition. So it was a moral victory, I guess.”
Despite their 0-2 record, the Falmouth team has fought hard against the Outer- and Mid-Cape teams, which are their only opponents on the Cape. Momentum from the intense tie-breakers that characterized all three of their week-one matches carried over into last weekend, but the team fell short of victory on all three courts in week two.
The 55-and-older men’s recreational team is part of the USTA National Organization and plays at the 8.0 level. They play three double matches each week and their roster boasts 14 individuals, most of whom are former college athletes, with backgrounds in everything from football to soccer.
“It’s great that they’re part of this,” said Dave Sugar. “It’s brought kind of a rebirth of tennis in our adult tennis groups here in the area, so it’s been really fun to watch these guys come together. Most of the members of my team and these opposing teams are former college athletes. That’s what happens at this age—a lot of men and women at these ages gravitate toward tennis because they’re athletes and they can take their skills and move them into this game. It happens regularly.”
Mr. Sugar said that Falmouth had been without an adult men’s tennis team for about 20 years until a group of guys got together and formed this team three years ago.
“We’re the upstarts in this group,” Mr. Sugar said ahead of the last weekend’s face-off against the Mid-Cape Athletic Club in Yarmouth. “We’re going up against the longstanding league champions many times over. This is sort of the New York Yankees of our league that we’re going up against.”
Despite the competitive spirit of rivalry, most of the players in the three-team Cape league have actually known each other for years and tend to be good friends.
“All the guys playing have known each other for many years, even though we’re from different parts of the Cape,” Mr. Sugar said. “It’s been a lot of fun. There’s great camaraderie between the teams, everybody tends to know each other through other network relationships because it’s a very small region. It’s got a great flavor to it. You can be literally playing against an opponent one day and then a few days later, on a different team on the Cape, you could be a teammate of theirs. So it’s a very unique environment.”
In the season-opener, all three doubles matches against the outer Cape team out of Eastham went to a tiebreaker, which Mr. Sugar said is very rare. Teammates Doug Rugh and Jeff Vivian took the win in their match, while pairs Doug Azarian and Joe Bucchiano and Bruce MacRae and Russ Ottey suffered close losses.
Last weekend, pairs Doug Rugh and Kevin Pease, Joe Bucchanio and Jeff Vivian, and Roy Heffernan and Joe Higgins played on courts one, two, and three, respectively. The team’s hopes of surprising their friendly opponents from the Mid-Cape club with a few tricks up their sleeve were successful, but overall fell short of producing a win. Still, Mr. Sugar said he considers their team to be a strong underdog in the league.
“Both teams have mentioned that they’ve been surprised with how strong we’ve become as a team,” he said.
The team will take on the Outer Cape club again on Saturday, November 13, at 1:30 PM at the Falmouth Sports Center.