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by Christopher Gerby The New York Buzz left town on Monday night with a solid record of 4 wins and 2 losses. They returned to their home court on Friday at just 4-4, following a tough 23-19 loss in Philadelphia and a lopsided 24-12 failure in Delaware. The Buzz managed to take just one set against the Smash, squeaking out a tiebreak in mixed doubles. Just two days later, they had a chance at revenge. Meanwhile, the Smash were coming off an odd home match in which they were supposed to be joined by Serena Williams, who instead dropped out, citing illness. Coming in to save the day on short notice was none other than Martina Navratilova. The legend's presence didn't help, though, as Delaware was beaten by league powerhouse Philadelphia. With regular Mariaan de Swardt back in the lineup, the Smash would look to repeat Wednesday night's drubbing of the Buzz. First set -- women's doubles: Craybas/De Villiers vs. De Swardt/Parkinson One of those flukey let aces gave Nannie de Villiers a 40-30 lead in the evening's first game. However, two points later Mariaan de Swardt launched a wicked backhand winner down the middle of the court to break for a 1-0 lead. The Buzz came right back with a break of De Swardt, however, and Craybas held for 2-1. Jill and Nannie jumped all over Holly Parkinson's serve in Game 4 and extended their lead to 3-1. An exchange of love holds by the South Africans took the set to 4-2, at which point John-Laffnie de Jager of the Smash brought a towel out to his teammates (and playfully whipped Mahesh Bhupathi with it on his way back to the bench). Any words of encouragement he may have had proved useless, though -- Craybas served out the set at love, winning it 5-2. It was another good win for New York's female doubles tandem, who put a mighty feather in their cap on Tuesday night by upsetting Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs. I asked Jill Craybas if that result has given her and Nannie the confidence to take on any team. "Yeah, we were pretty excited when we won that match. Like Mahesh and Justin (Bower), we're getting a little bit more used to playing with each other and knowing where each other are on the court." OVERALL SCORE: NEW YORK 5, DELAWARE 2 Second set -- men's singles: Justin Bower vs. Mike Sell The second set got off to a noisy start when an annoying, persistent car alarm began blaring in the background. Delaware's Mike Sell lobbed a ball in its direction and got a big round of applause when (coincidentally or not) the alarm was silenced about ten seconds later. Sell then went about silencing the crowd with a love hold. Justin Bower held his own serve and announcer Dr. Sound led the fans in some rythmic applause. Sell exclaimed "no way!" when he looked to the sidelines and saw teammate John-Laffnie de Jager loudly joining in. Mike was undeterred, playing another immaculate service game for 2-1. But after struggling on the road trip and the early going here, Justin Bower finally got in a groove. He held for 2-all and then impressively broke Sell at love to go up 3-2. Bower recorded two aces and a lovely topspin backhand pass in Game 6, another hold. He finished Sell off just one game later, breaking him again to win the set 5-2. It was quite a dramatic turning of the tables, considering Sell beat Bower 5-3 two nights ago. OVERALL SCORE: NEW YORK 10, DELAWARE 4 Third set -- men's doubles: Bhupathi/Bower vs. De Jager/Sell De Jager and Sell argued strenuously about a line call that "wasn't even close" in the middle of this set's opening game, a Bower hold. Dr. Sound decided John-Laffnie should be called "Lurch" (obviously unaware that Magnus Larsson has cornered the market on that tennis nickname) and tormented the 6' 4" doubles specialist by playing "Addams Family" music between every point of Game 2. It apparently worked in distracting De Jager, whose serve was broken at love. Bhupathi then held for 3-0, giving New York a commanding 9-point advantage in the overall score. Smash coach Brad Dancer tried to stay upbeat, though, and shouted "That's great, guys!" after Sell held for 1-3. A love hold from Bower made it 4-1 and put the ball back in De Jager's hands. He was relentlessly picked on again by Dr. Sound, who this time played "If I Only Had a Brain" from "The Wizard of Oz". John-Laffnie was a remarkably good sport about the whole thing, even waving his racquet around like an orchestra conductor. He went on to hold for 2-4, but things looked grim for Delaware when Mahesh Bhupathi opened up a 40-0 lead in Game 7. Coach Dancer and Mariaan de Swardt even threw white towels onto the court, signaling surrender. De Jager and Sell actually reeled off winning three points in a row to stave off elimination, but Bower finally put away an overhead to clich New York's third consecutive 5-2 win. What a difference two days make! OVERALL SCORE: NEW YORK 15, DELAWARE 6 Fourth set -- women's singles: Jill Craybas vs. Mariaan de Swardt Holly Parkinson beat Jill Craybas 5-1 on Wednesday night, so I was surprised to see Mariaan de Swardt called on for this set. De Swardt's powerful serve and backhand slice once earned her a victory over Steffi Graf, but she hasn't won a singles match on the WTA Tour all year. Nonetheless, the move made sense to Craybas. "I wasn't too surprised by that, because the courts are faster and Mariaan has a bigger serve and hits a little bit bigger ball." De Swardt took advantage of the quick hard court, piling up service winners on the way to 2-all. Surprisingly, the next four games were all breaks, with Craybas hitting some excellent backhands but failing to serve well. The set was ultimately settled in a tiebreak, which featured three service winners from De Swardt. She made her coach look wise, winning the tiebreak 5 points to 1. "It's hard to get a rhythm against her," Craybas said about the loss. "She just kinda goes for everything." OVERALL SCORE: NEW YORK 19, DELAWARE 11 Fifth set -- men's doubles: Bhupathi/De Villiers vs. De Jager/De Swardt Still trailing by eight points in the total score, Delaware had to hope for a miracle (i.e. winning the fifth set and several consecutive games in overtime). No miracle appeared to be forthcoming when John-Laffnie de Jager had his serve broken yet again. That gave the Buzz a 2-0 lead, which went to 3-0 when a splendid drop volley from Mahesh Bhupathi finished off a Nannie de Villiers hold. After De Swardt and Bhupathi held their serves, the pressure was on De Jager to extend this match. He simply could not buy a first serve this evening, however. At 40-40 (a winner-take-all "game point" in Team Tennis), Bhupathi split the Smash with a big backhand, completing an easy 5-1 win of the final set. Amazingly, the Buzz managed to win by the exact same overall score they lost by in their last match. FINAL SCORE: NEW YORK 24, DELAWARE 12 "We were pretty upset about what happened" in Delaware on Wednesday night, Mahesh Bhupathi said after the revenge win. "We went there expecting to win and we got pretty much beaten up, so we came back and put in a couple hours yesterday and put in an hour of practice this morning. We were pretty sharp out there today." Jill Craybas admitted "we took Delaware a little bit too lightly on Wednesday... I think we all played a little bit better today." The team won't make the mistake of looking ahead to next week's match against Jimmy Connors and the Freedoms. "We usually like taking one match at a time," Craybas said. Bhupathi isn't thinking about the playoff picture either. "We were at 4-4 before today, so we don't really have too many options. We just have to win pretty much every match we play if we want to get to the playoffs. As long as we don't think about that and just try to win every match, the playoffs will take care of itself." I also had a nice post-match chat with Holly Parkinson, who seemed a tad bewildered that anyone wanted to interview her. I asked the 22-year-old American about playing with Martina Navratilova, with whom she lost a set of doubles the previous night. "Oh, it was exciting. It was a great experience. Very exciting. I was a little nervous, but it was very fun." Speaking of fun, the Smash (particularly that rascal John-Laffnie de Jager) at least seem to enjoy themselves on the sidelines. "That's what it's all about, you know, go out there and have a good time," said Parkinson. "Even when you're playing terrible or you're exhausted from being on the road, you can still just laugh and make fun with it." Lastly, I asked Holly if she was confident about getting her WTA singles ranking (which has fallen from a high of 85 at the end of last year to 130 at the moment) back up to where it was in 2000. "Team Tennis is great, because you get in a good groove, you play a lot of matches, get really good practice," she replied. "At the end of the season I usually go out playing pretty well." |