Chicago Charities – McNitt and Shipz capture the Women’s and du Randt and Parsons the Men’s

With Hurricane Sandy leaving one of platform tennis’ strongholds reeling, the devastation along the East Coast was more than evident this year at the Women’s 2012 Chicago Charities tournament. Many of the nationally-ranked teams that usually come out of the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia region were eerily absent this year, virtually allowing Chicago women full reign of the tournament.

This year’s Charities benefitted Family Matters, a group located in Chicago’s North of Howard neighborhood that offers children and families individualized personal development experiences that provide opportunities to find their place in the world and to be a force for positive change.

The 48-team women’s event kicked off on Friday, November 2 at 8 a.m., with overcast skies and mid-50s temperatures that were sustained throughout the weekend.

The opening day matches extended women’s play through the quarter-finals, which saw top-seeded Mary Doten and Chelsea Nusslock against fifth-seeded Lynn Schneebeck and Shannon Vinson. Doten and Nusslock cruised through with a score of 6-1, 6-1.

The second quarter featured the third-seeded Hallie Bodman and Sally Jones as they defeated seventh-seeded Janet Mazzola and Ann Turner in a 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 marathon.

The newly-formed team of Wendy Shpiz and Jane McNitt was unseeded due to not having any team ranking points. Despite that fact, they triumphed over Holly Tritt and Shawna Zuccarini, 6-1, 6-1.

Suzanne Lemery and Kelly Rohrback were seeded eighth and defeated second seeds Ania Kazakevich and Marina Ohlmuller, 6-2, 6-1.

The all-Chicago semi-finals took place at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning with Doten and Nusslock advancing past Bodman and Jones while, on the neighboring court, McNitt and Shpiz defeated Lemery and Rohrbach. After the semis, both advancing teams were given an hour to reenergize in preparation for the finals.

The finals showed powerful ground strokes from Nusslock and Shpiz, mixed with finesse and more selective power from Doten and McNitt.

Playing their first tournament together, McNitt and Shpiz triumphed over the top-seeds, delivering McNitt’s third Charities championship (`02, ’05, ’12) and Shpiz’s first.

By Saturday morning it was apparent that Hurricane Sandy’s impact on air travel had waned. East Coast teams were in full force for the 64-team Men’s 2012 Charities.

Like the women’s schedule, the men played through their first day to the quarter-finals. Drew Broderick and Chris Gambino, last season’s National Champions, teamed up again and rolled through to the semi-finals by defeating eighth-seeded David Caldwell and Blake Cordish, 1-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Scott Bondurant and Mark Johnson came into the Charities unseeded and knocked off fourth-seeded Mike Marino and Dane Schmidgall, 6-2, 6-1.

In the third quarter match-up, third-seeded Juan Arraya and LennartJonason defeated sixth-seeded Scott Estes and Mike Stulac, 6-4, 6-4. And rounding off the day’s events, second-seeded Johan du Randt and Mark Parsons defeated the unseeded team of Ben McKnight and Pete Rose, 5-7, 6-2, 7-5.

Like the quarter-finals, the semi-finals were played at the hosting Glen View Club in Glen View, Illinois. Broderick and Gambino edged out Bondurant and Johnson, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. With action
tense and each point being played as if it was match point, the battle raged for nearly three hours and included one point that lasted over ten minutes. Broderick said, “Our style is to slow play and then pick up the pace again.” He added, “Even if we lose a long point, we feel that we really win out if the point is’a good one:’

On the other side of the draw, du Randt and Parsons won a see-saw battle over Martinez-Arraya and Jonason, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 to advance to the finals.

The finals came down to long points highlighted with bursts of speed and power. But in the end, it was du Randt and Parsons who defeated Gambino and Broderick for the title of Chicago Charities Champions.