Lisa Musgrave & Lois Harris

DATES: April 15-17, 2023
LOCATION: Columbus, Georgia

This event, a first-ever collaboration between the National Women’s and Senior Men’s tennis organizations, was originally scheduled for late September of 2022, but Hurricane Ian forced a reschedule. Noble Hendrix, of the NSMTA, gamely rebooked the event, and on Saturday, April 15, over 120 participants showed up at the stunning Columbus Regional Tennis Center in Columbus, Georgia. With 39 har-tru courts, 14 hard courts, and 4 pickleball courts, it is arguably the premier public clay court facility in the country.

The senior men were in charge of this initial event. They proposed 8 teams, each consisting of 3 men and 3 women (minimum) in each of 3 age divisions: 64 and over, 69 and over, and 74 and over. A match would consist of 9 matches: men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles, in each of the age categories. However, ultimately only 7 teams were able to come, and they were broken down into 2 round-robin groups of 3 and 4.  They each played a round-robin in their group, with the top 2 teams playing a “crossover” semi-final (group A #1 plays group B #2, etc) on Sunday afternoon, and a final on Monday morning. Matches were best 2 out of 3 sets, regular scoring, with a match tie-break in lieu of the third set.

We had beautiful weather over the weekend. However, with one of the round-robins having only 3 teams, a “bye” situation meant that some players came quite a way but only played 2 matches. In addition, the rescheduled event conflicted with several men’s events. That combined with a devastating recent tornado meant that the men’s rosters were not full, and the substitution rules created a scoring issue. However, there were many fine, close matches, and one of the semi-finals, plus the final match came down to a match tie-break.

One of the highlights was the generous gift of NWTO and NSMTA logo wear. Women received a long-sleeved white shirt, a green half-zip long sleeved shirt and a half-zip vest. Men received a blue long-sleeved shirt, a blue long sleeved half-zip shirt, and a hat. Also, plenty of water, Gatorade, fizzy water, ice cream bars and soda were available all weekend. Lunch, a nice variety of sandwiches, salad, and cookies, was catered Saturday and Sunday. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there were happy hours with beer, wine, soda and snacks. Lastly, there was a banquet at a nearby facility on Sunday night, with a cash bar. All this was included in the $100 per person entry fee.  

This was an ambitious undertaking, and we salute Noble Hendrix (with help from our Jan Kirkland) for his superhuman organizational efforts (all done twice!). Now it’s the NWTO’s turn: should we attempt another collaboration with the NSMTA? What would it look like?

Share your thoughts at info@nwto.us