CHAPTER ONE
1970: N.Y. Summer Tournaments. 1970: Jamaican International Championships.
After jumping ahead, via Volume V, to connect the shared U.S.-China “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” Tours of 1971/1972, I return now to where I’d left off in Vol. IV, and, in starting to cover the 1970-71 season, will begin in the New York area with their post-National’s tournaments.
At the Trenton Team Matches (played Davis Cup style), 1970 U.S. Open eighth-finalists Tim Boggan, George “The Chief” Brathwaite, and Fuarnado Roberts, semifinalist Errol Resek, and U.S. Junior Champion Mitch Sealtiel were among those battling it out. Errol’s wife Jairie in her Topics coverage tells us that, in the one semi, Vic Landau/Alex Shiroky won a close tie over Sealtiel/Steve Rigo largely on the strength of their deuce in the 3rd doubles win and Alex’s near –19, 20, 15 singles debacle in which in that 2nd game he went from 19-13 up to match-point down before winning.
In the other semi, Errol beat both Roberts and Brathwaite (whom he’d also defeated, 19 in the 4th, in the final of the Long Island Closed). In the doubles, as U.S. Open semifinalists (beaten by the winners D-J Lee/Glenn Cowan), Errol and Tim figured to be slight favorites over George and Robbie, but they finally lost (after being down 20-17 match point) 26-24 in the 3rd. Boggan dropped two deuce games to The Chief, but in the deciding match he upset Robbie two straight.
In the final, it was Errol over Alex, and Tim over Vic. The doubles match was one-apiece when Landau’s knee started bothering him, and he was forced to say Enough! It was 3:00 a.m.
At the June White Plains tournament, held on 5 tables in the air-conditioned Lila Wallace YWCA, neither Long Island Closed winner Alice Green nor runner-up Marguerite Burnett of the U.N. entered. The Women’s was won by Westchester’s Sylvia Feiner over Pat Hildebrand, former Barbados star who’d emigrated to Canada but, having married, was now, after an 8-month layoff, playing out of Philadelphia.
Biggest surprise of the tournament occurred in Class A winner Alan Bell’s final with Senior Champ Marcy Monasterial. Alan’s up 2-0 and 20-13 match-point. Wants to go out with his signature shot…except he doesn’t have a signature shot. So he’ll improvise—will smack one in like a beau showing off for his girl…20-14, 20-15. Missed twice—o.k., understandable, it could happen. But now he has the serve…and serve-and-one opportunities…20-16, 20-17. Better be careful, eh? Wouldn’t want to blow this easy three-gamer…20-18, 20-19 (Damn ridiculous!)…20-20! And, sure enough, Marcy, who once upset a teasing Reisman, again proves himself a one-armed bandit, steals the game, is still alive.
In the 4th, Bell can’t do a thing but try to recover from what he’s done in the 3rd. On into the 5th, and, well, now he’s got his head together, but the win’s not as satisfying as it might have been.
Class B winner is Long Island’s top Junior, Gary Adelman, over Arthur Nieves. Gary will soon forsake table tennis for tennis as he’s already one of the best 14-year-olds in the East. “I feel there’s no real merit in being good in table tennis,” Gary will later tell Long Island reporter Doug Smith. “If you’re good in tennis you can win over $100,000; if you’re good in table tennis, you win $1,000.”
Since Bukiet isn’t entered in, and Roberts doesn’t show for, the 37-entry Men’s, and Berchin and Landau aren’t at their best (Freddie hasn’t been playing, and Vic hasn’t fully recuperated from his knee operation), the one semi’s has Brathwaite (who’s taken out Sol Schiff) vs. Shiroky (who, after he’s bearded Boggan, all friendly-like tries to calm him down with some Nut Club raw sunflower seeds). Both George and Alex are drinking honey before their match. Possibilities there for being sponsored by an enterprising advertiser?
Alex, up 2-1, consuming at the break half a quart of orange juice, has been looking good. If George chops, Alex moves in fast, loops, then hits out hard, once, twice, then drops. Although Shiroky has never beaten Brathwaite and maybe won’t this time as they go into the 5th, Alex’s pattern of driving George back, then catching him with, as my 9-year-old says, “little bunts,” rushes him to a 10-4 lead. He’s gotta be feeling his vitamins—in fact, feels so good that he begins doing some unnecessary acrobatics…which brings the score to 10-9. But he again builds up a lead and admonishing self (“Don’t go wild”) advances to the final.
On the other side of the Draw, a trim, tanned, and mustachioed Berchin loses in the 1st round to David Philip, formerly of Trinidad now of Brooklyn. Introduced to serious play by Brathwaite some 18 months ago, Dave, who lost in the A’s 19 in the 3rd to Bell, by practicing regularly at the N.Y. Club has developed a good loop and has learned how to pick his shots. Another upset is registered in the 2nd round by Al Schwartz who comes from behind to beat Landau.
However, it’s Rory Brassington who emerges as the finalist against a strangely passive Shiroky. What possesses Alex to begin pushing with Rory I don’t know. Where’s his juice? Rory stiffly, definitively, chops every ball, wins the 1st. In the 2nd, Brassington, up 19-16 without making one offensive stroke, suddenly sees a ball put two feet high to his backhand. He rears up and—it’s as if he’s going to let fly a Frisbee with all his might—whips across a backhand that sails tracer-like long. Follows that by roaring, “BELL! Get away from the sandwich table. Don’t think I don’t know you’re doing it just to annoy me.” Two minutes more and Rory’s let Alex back into the match. The 3rd game, won at deuce by Alex, is embarrassingly full of errors by both players. At 16-all in the 4th, there’s a crashing sound: Bell has sat down on a chair that’s collapsed. From his position on the floor, he hastens to apologize, then can’t resist, says, “I did it just to annoy you.” Down 18-19 Alex serves into the net, and they go into the 5th. “What can I tell you?” says Shiroky as he rounds the table. “I’m not serious.”
Alex opens the 5th with a whiff. Rory, up 5-1, senses victory—or does he? He makes 4 pushing errors, is up 6-5. Then Alex whiffs another. And another. The dreadful play continues until one final error by Alex allows Rory to win 19 in the 5th. Though Brassington may celebrate with a six-pack or two, it is not a memorable tournament.
Bad play is one thing. Horrendous, chaotic conditions another. Allow me to bring you the NYC Summer Holiday Open—which is a memorable tournament, held in the subterranean depths of Gusikoff’s Club, or what was once his Club there in the basement of the Riverside Plaza Hotel on 73rd St. off Broadway.
No, the Club is not affiliated with the USTTA (costs somebody $10), but two weeks before the tournament we do want to do the right thing, get the tournament sanctioned. We make up and begin handing out entry blanks while we try to get hold of the Regional Director—or, failing that, at least get to someone who knows him, warning that someone while we’re at it that there’s another someone here in New York who wants to punch that Regional Director in the nose the minute he sets foot in our Club—which, needless to say, he doesn’t.
We make the connection and our check takes care of the sanction—after all, short notice or not, the USTTA can use the $35. However, it’s true we didn’t actually play with approved balls, and certainly we had little use for a Tournament Referee, even had such a person been there for the first day of the tournament.
We’re not picky in New York City. We live and let live—most of the time. You know, change clothes by Table 1 (careful about the dust though). The girls—women—they’re not jocks, more often than not they knock before they go into the one available john. This Club is our camp-out home—we expect to rough it a little.
Fortunately, we’re not going to be holding the tournament just in the 4-table Club proper—but have the use of the spacious 5-table gym in the sub-basement. I’d best add right away that I’m at the very whirlpool center of it all. In exchange for running the tournament I was getting free entries and so were my two boys—and, believe it or not, it would have cost us $37.50 to enter the events we wanted to. Of course I was being practical, but I really like making up draws, finding out who the players are, getting all the matches played somehow—I really like organizing.
And here was something that needed organizing. For, as it turned out, we could not have the gym downstairs. It was just one of those things we hadn’t checked on. The owner was gosh-darned mad at us. And no wonder. Whoever ran the last tournament left things in a terrible mess. Players, spectators—they’d wanted to eat, drink, talk, smoke, litter—wanted, in short, to be at a sporting event.
So what am I to do? Something or nothing? Clearly we’ll try to play the A’s and B’s, the A/B Consolations, and the A Doubles as had been scheduled. I start the matches where I can, at 5:30, half an hour before they’re expected to go off.
Night comes on. As the sun goes down, more players arrive, it gets hotter. People peek in from the gym, the health club next door—is this the steam room? There are over 40 players in the A’s, over 40 in the B’s. Soon it is too hot for some. They would like to play and leave. When might they play their next match?
I answer the phone. It rings a lot—as if each time some urgent message was trying to get through to someone. “New York Table Tennis.”…“New York Table Tennis.”
“Is it too late to enter?” asks a voice.
“Of course not,” I say. “Come on down.”
I keep getting up from the desk, make sure that, say, Mr. Factor knows Mr. Chen, make sure they realize they’re next on Table 2 (which is marked Table 6). Mr. Silverstein thinks it would be nice if I’d put him against Mr. Monet whom he thinks he might beat. I agree that, yes, things could be nicer. I strip to the bare waist, conscious that I’ve low slung pants on and that the USTTA Vice-President’s jockey shorts are showing to men and women I’ve never seen before who’ve come to watch.
It’s time for Mr. Madonado’s match. But Mr. Maldonado is not to be seen. “He may not come,” says his friend. Bill Marlins walks in, and, having found out there’s a tournament, becomes Mr. Maldonado. “What’s the default procedure?” someone asks. I maneuver round him.
“No, no draw sheets are posted.” We have no draw sheets. Only my scribbled on slips of paper. Occasionally, quick guzzling a coke, I take Roman liberties. An 8th’s player (“I’ll play anybody but him”) gets into another 8th’s; two players from a 16th’s, they’re from the same Long Island club—right, out one of you goes, is placed elsewhere.
Seven hours later, the A’s and the B’s are played out to the quarter’s; those in the Consolation have been properly consoled; and I have played a successful doubles match with my older son who earlier I had sent, chaperoned, out to the Great White Way, to the movie “Downhill Racer,” about a ski champion.
Juniors and the rest begin play at 9:30 in the morning.
Senior Henry Deutsch says he’s going to call me in the morning. If I don’t get the downstairs gym he’s not coming back. “Right, Henry,” I say, and wish him goodnight.
Next morning it’s as if Fate’s against us. I take the hour’s quick ride from suburbia with my boys in a driving rainstorm. Having arrived in Manhattan, so intent am I in dashing from my car through the rain, I hurry to lock the doors (this is New York, I don’t forget that) and leave my keys in the car.
The sponsor has given me the keys to the Club though—that’s the important thing—and I have only to open the door. Soon the Sterns, the Zakarins, the Grahams, the Houses, the Gvildys, the Blejers, the Wolfs have joined my sons and me for the Junior play. It’s very much a family outing. Sort of an indoor rainy picnic—coffee, orange juice, danish.
I pair the little ones with the little ones; the better players with those who have chances to win trophies. There are, so to speak, modified round robins—with only the logic of a desperate man trying to keep it all in two-hour balance.
Little 8-year-old Paul Gvildys plays very well. From time to time he is sternly coached (in Latvian?) by his father. “Aren’t you playing any more, Pranas?” I ask him, remembering his anguished face of 15-20 years ago. No, he has given it up—no reason exactly.
My 9-year-old Scott is not beating Timmy House. His father, a professor, sits watching (he and I are something of alter-egos; both Ohioans, we knew one another years ago—but Bob no longer plays in tournaments). Scott is cursing after very point. It does not look good. It does not look good to me. And though I too well understand it, I don’t like it. After the match Scott and I seek the privacy of the john. Its urinals don’t always work but there are disinfectants. “People don’t like it!” I tell him. “Especially from a kid!” He already knows, at 9, everything I’m telling him.
The Zakarins, were it just for themselves, would not have come. It’s for their boys—that’s why they’re here. There are values to be had in the basements and sub-basements of the world.
Eric, my other son, just turned 7, is playing an older boy. Eric’s winning—and is therefore asked to begin serving properly. I, watching, have always been leery of rules. I look on them as a necessary evil, a means to an end, to try to keep society intact. I’m hardly an innovative or adventurous person, but just as I don’t think you can teach writing, make the words come alive, by focusing on grammar, so I’m skeptical of so-called prescriptions for the right way to lead one’s life, or teach one’s kid.
At home, I’d just gotten Eric (like Scott before him) to our makeshift basement table, always hoped he’d have fun—well, serious fun. I’d never wanted to kill it for him. Now the ball is wobbling round his small, outstretched hand. And suddenly it’s as if, there in that basement, he feels all the storied weight of the world above. He comes off the table a loser, shaking, crying. But he has rallied from 15-20 match-point down to 18-20. He has not despaired.
Another father, Mr. Stern—he didn’t play in the tournament either—tries to let his boy go his own way. And Mike, his 10-year-old, does do that beautifully—gives a game to my son so he’ll get his head together and make the match more 19-19 in the 3rd interesting.
But when his boy plays the much more difficult to beat Jeff Zakarin, the Long Island Under 13 Champion, Mr. Stern applauds point after point in encouragement—much as I with my clenched fist do with Scott or Eric. Jeff’s younger brother, Chuck, age 8, on hearing that Jeff has lost, is himself upset, crying. And it’s this disappointment, this pain, that somehow is a value?
Mr. Van Gor, another father, is pointing out to his boy who has entered a Doubles event on his own, “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
And I’m saying, “Well, it’s really more my fault than his. I sort of pushed him into it.”
To which Mr. Van Gor says something like, “He’s old enough to take the responsibility. Don’t you teach your children that?”
I don’t reply, and Mr. Van Gor’s rhetorical question slips away. Though I’m thinking in tandem with him, I’m not in perfect agreement with him. For I’ve never in my life said to my kids, “Don’t ever do that to me again!” For, if by chance they did, I wouldn’t know how or why to carry out my darkest threat. And yet Mr. Van Gor is surely right—one has to learn to be responsible.
Time goes by. The young people will gradually be replaced by grown-ups. Surprise! The sponsor arrives—says, yes, we can have the gym downstairs! Henry Deutsch, who of course has decided to appear anyway—come right down to it, he’d rather play than not—is, well, still not quite delighted. He suspicions correctly that it will be a long day.
There is no loudspeaker between floors but me, my voice, trying to get players together for back-up matches—me yelling not 10 feet away from Table 1. The barriers? There aren’t any between tables. And there’s no way to get to, say, Table 5 but to play, as it were, Red light, Green light past Tables 1-2-3-4. Perhaps you can imagine how people are talking—though it’s probably the best-run tournament they’ve had in New York City for years, at least from the point of view of quickly getting matches on and off the tables.
“SILENCE!” roars Rory Brassington who, leading the Canadian Champ Larry Lee two games to one, is on his way to losing in the 5th. The very foundations of the place ought to shake—but not the people, they’re unmoved.
Mr. Briceno, the former Ecuadorian Champ, is puzzled by it all. It’s as if he’s never seen anything like it in the Americas. He doesn’t even understand what the events are. Suppose he loses, what are the rules here? He is playing in the final of the A’s against Curtis McNear. “No, no, Mr. Briceno!” I rush up past three tables (“Let!”… “Let!”…“Let!”) “Mr. Briceno, you got beat in the semi’s! Mr. Rao…HERE, MR. RAO!…Mr. Rao plays Mr. McNear.”
Mr. McNear doesn’t care who he plays. So long as there’s an umpire he likes or at least doesn’t dislike. Not though that he needs an umpire, or referee, he’s always managed pretty well by himself. Cyril Lederman’s list of qualified umpires—you can use that, read that in the john; Curtis wants to see the man face to face, then we’ll see what happens.
McNear, however, is not without honor. He values, for example, “grace under pressure”—a strength which, whether Curtis knows it or not, he got in some measure from his opponent Al Schwartz during their disputed match.
As the nervous hours pass, the contests there in the depths continue. Civilization ultimately prevails. Players may yell at spectators (“LEO!”) and spectators may yell back (“UP YOURS!”). But, inexorably, guided by the Master Director’s hand, the tournament wobbles to a conclusion.
What, I wonder, did Pauline Somael and her little Rice Chex girl who dropped by think of it all? The names of the women players—they were unfamiliar, said Pauline, who’s been out of the Game for a while.
And always there were those who came to me wanting to know when they could play so they could leave. And those, too, who (liking what they saw?) wanted to join the USTTA—and did I have change for a twenty?
As night again is coming on, or seems to be, I’m talking to Mr. Van Gor. He wants to know where his children are supposed to play. The Junior Doubles are still going on. They’ve been held back for a while, but now they really must be played. “Send the kids upstairs!” shouts somebody next to me. To that hot house, I think, no way—and just then I hear someone out there on the floor yelling at me.
“Shut the duck up!” At least that’s what one might have thought he said to me. “Shut the duck up!” And, well, as I’m looking into Mr. Van Gor’s eyes, I wasn’t about to take that quack connotation. I wasn’t serenely floating on stream, and I wasn’t a quack. And so rising up and addressing whoever it was out there screaming for silence, I shouted at the top of my voice, “Oh, goshdarnit! Oh, goshdarnit! This player wants quiet! This player wants quiet!” And having gotten that poison out of my system I resumed talking quite reasonably to Mr. Van Gor.
All good things come to an end, and I heard later that the tournament was over with around 10:00 p.m.—which here in the City must have set some sort of record. No, it wasn’t a give-up on my part, it was simply that the tournament had progressed to where it didn’t need me and I, easing the pressure, certainly didn’t need it.
I left early, around 7:30. Yes, my sweet wife had taken the train in from Long Island, and opened that hot car I had trapped myself with. “Tim was mean to me,” she confided to Bernie, and Bukiet, smiling, as if he’d seen me testy before, said to her, “You come home with me.” So I went with my family back to suburbia. Four forty-five in the morning, that’s when I was getting up. My holiday weekend was over. Now, like most other people, I had work to do.
Results:
Men’s: Bernie Bukiet over Vic Landau. Women’s: Hilary Cohen over Pat Hildebrand. Mixed Doubles: Larry Lee/Cohen over Dave Gaskill/Hildebrand. A Singles: Mohan Rao over Curtis McNear. B Singles: Marty Theil over Arthur Nieves. A-B Doubles: Nieves/Rao over McNear/Philip. Senior’s: Henry Deutsch over Gerardo Briceno. Men’s Consolation: Deutsch over Pete Cohen. A-B Consolation: Irwin Wolf over Alan Moran. Junior 17: Jeff Zakarin over Timmy House. Junior 15: Mike Stern over House. Junior 13: House over Zakarin. Junior Doubles: Mike and Muriel Stern over House/Scott Boggan.
Jamaican International Championships
Moving on, I might as well go for another unusual, but really fun summer tournament—especially since Brathwaite, Resek, and Roberts have been invited to it. This one’s the Jamaican International Championships being played in Kingston that’s written up for Topics (Sept.-Oct., 1970, 16) by Errol’s wife Jairie and Robbie.
The other top American player invited was John Tannehill, but since his luggage “couldn’t keep up with him, from Cleveland to New York to Kingston…he was into Errol’s clothes for the beginning of our trip.” No problem identifying himself at the Jamaica airport, though, for there wasn’t any customs inspection. After being offered “a rum drink or two,” the party was driven, “as if by God’s escort, down the middle of a two lane highway, with cars frantically coming and going, to the downtown Kingston Hotel, well known for its night life entertainment. That and the pool made it a good place to stay.”
The several days of play took place in “the Arena next to the Soccer Stadium, under perfect tournament conditions (except for an occasional ‘brown-out,’ some sort of Con-Edison-like power failure).” Beginning exhibitions and warm-up matches seemed to increase spectator appreciation, and led to, first, a New York vs. West Indies Match, and then the climactic International Championships.
New York (Brathwaite, Resek, Tannehill) won 5-2 against the West Indies (Trinidad’s Derek DeSilva, and Jamaica’s Orville “Les” Haslam, and Robbie).“Resek and Tannehill beat Roberts, and all three U.S. stars beat the somewhat moody on-off DeSilva.” Roberts stopped Brathwaite, a popular win, but it was the handsome, exceptionally fit, London-based Haslam that the crowd of 3,000 wanted to see in action. People everywhere, “in the streets and in the hotels…who wanted to bet—and bet heavily—kept asking Robbie if Tannehill could take a game off Haslam or possibly even win the match.” To which Robbie would reply that, “Yes, he could take a game at least.”
However, in this West Indies Match, “Haslam’s springing loop from a squat position, his treacherous side-spin serve proved far too much for John to handle and the match was turned into an exhibition.” A smart move, for perhaps many in the audience were convinced that Tannehill wouldn’t be showing “his real stuff” until the International the following night, when of course they’d be back to watch.
To me, the most interesting part of this Kingston coverage, and one that we in the U.S. could take a lesson from, can be seen in the following two paragraphs:
Promoter Baz (Buzz) Freckleton, Secretary of the Jamaican Association, shrewdly ran the week long matches to please the thousands of wildly screaming, up on their feet spectators. If they wanted a little TV exhibition stuff he gave it to them. If they wanted serious play he gave it to them. Fans like this you never saw in the States. Paid attendance like this you never saw in the States.
‘Peanuts! Popcorn! Candies! Sweets!’ You could hardly hear the vendors for the excitement. It was all so much like a night game in some not so lily-white sport. Always dramatic, always interesting, the more so because—oh, you could tell from their beautiful faces—the spectators refused to be bored, insisted on involving themselves in the game. Moreover, because there was only one table in use each night one sensed always a ring of excitement round the combatants.”
Men’s Singles play would of course highlight the tournament. But there was a Men’s Doubles final—won 3-1 by Haslam/Brathwaite over Roberts/DeSilva. And there was a Women’s final too. Monica DeSouza, whom we’d seen play in the U.S., “defeated fellow Guyanian Doreen Chowhah who, only two weeks before in Barbados, won the West Indies Championship.” Ms. Chowhah said she “didn’t like to be a Champion.” Oh? Why not? Because then, she said, “everybody’s against you.”
In the Men’s, it certainly looked like the participants wanted to be Champions, and were treated accordingly. Roberts, playing with a hard bat, on beating DeSilva and returning to his bench, “had to stand up and bow to the crowd.” Of course there were upsets and near upsets that pleased the crowd. Errol, whom the local papers hailed as coming not from the Dominican Republic but from Hungary, and who in practice had twice held Mike Baptiste under 10, unaccountably lost to him, 18, 19, in the all too real match.
As for Brathwaite, he’d been in trouble with “lanky collegian Garth Isaacs who down 15-5 in his match with Tannehill had rallied to 19-all before losing. But down 18-16 in the 3rd, The Chief stays focused and doesn’t allow Garth another point. Then more trouble for George against the “ever-smiling Mike Baptiste, always a cool, thinking player.” But “George’s defense proved too solid,” and in beating Baptiste in 3, George takes 3rd place in the tournament.
The final of course is between Haslam and Tannehill, and it’s said that 5,000 spectators have come to watch. Were the 6’,3”, 210-pound Haslam who runs a table tennis clinic in London “interested in making movies (which as it happens he is), he could do a lot worse than to star himself on two continents in this production.”
In their 1st game, “Tannehill shows tremendous control, makes really magnificent placements”—but, down 19-16, Haslam “rears that upright forehand and smacks the ball silly, runs the game out!” No, John is not demoralized by Les’s rally, nor by the thunderous claps, is not even intimidated, for he wins the next two games 11 and 18. Haslam “almost beaten three straight! What are the odds on that?”
John continues his gutsy play. “But Haslam’s power shots (‘He hits the ball harder from both sides than anybody I’ve ever seen,’ says Tannehill) again and again have thousands up off their feet screaming.” At 18-all, John mis-serves (or, as the local Daily Gleaner put it, “he buffed the vital service”), and loses the 4th. Match all even.
“The normal expression in Jamaica for a good loop that is returned high and is followed by a good kill is ‘Loop! Cock-up! Wham!’ Well, an ardent fan of Haslam’s was overheard yelling, ‘Loop! Cock-up! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!’ In fact, both players are whamming like crazy.” However, here in the 5th, Les breaks open the game early and by “sheer power” limits John to only 10 points.
So it’s a happy ending for Jamaicans: Haslam, pressured, overcomes the would-be Giant Killer Tannehill, almost a certain pick for the U.S. World Team, and remains a National Hero. Soon, we hope, he’ll compete in the States. His presence there, along with others like him, can only help our players improve.