It wouldn’t be a successful senior year for Southern California in senior tennis if Dodo Cheney of La Jolla didn’t add to her collection of more than 370 gold balls. Now 91, Cheney won the 85s Gold Slam in doubles with Betty Cookson and also won the 90s indoors singles in Portland as Southern California once again collected its share of gold, silver and bronze balls during 2008.
In the 90s hardcourt doubles in La Jolla, Cheney did get beat as she and her partner Marge Broce of San Marcos fell to Los Angeles’ Pat Yeomans and Carmel’s Jean Harris in the final.
Inside Tennis Senior Player of the Year Dorothy Matthiessen did her best Cheney impression (see sidebar) all season, capturing all four national titles in singles and doubles titles in the women’s 70s as well as being one of 12 players from SoCal named to an international senior cup team.
There were some top performers who emerged onto the SoCal senior scene for the first time as well as players who continue to rack up the hardware like they’ve done for so many years.
“It was simply another dominating year,” said the SCTA’s Annette Buck, in charge of adult and senior competition. Added Carolyn Nichols, who runs a web site dedicated to senior tennis: “Southern California again proved to be one of the best. They had 12 players play on world cup teams. It was another impressive year for SoCal’s top seniors.”
Glendale’s Tina Karwasky lost just once all year in the 55s and won all five of her international matches as the No. 1 player and was captain of the Maureen Connolly Cup team. She led the U.S. to a win over Australia in the final. She also won the grass courts singles and doubles in Philadelphia and the indoors singles and doubles in Homewood, Ill., to finish the year as the nation’s top player in her division and No. 5 in the world.
Palm Desert’s Mike Fedderly played his best tennis in SoCal events. He felt right at home at the start of the year winning the Babolat World Tennis Classic in Palm Springs and on the Fourth of July captured the national 45s hardcourts at the Westlake Tennis & Swim Club beating Carlsbad’s Steve Dawson in the finals in dramatic fashion, 7-6 (3), 6-2, 7-6 (4).
He suffered a tough 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 loss to Val Wilder at the grasscourts semis, but came back to take the bronze ball for his third-place showing. The pair went on to win the gold with their second national doubles titles on the year (they also won the hardcourts at Westlake). Fedderly says goodbye to the 45s and hello to the 50s where he should dominate as a first-year player in ‘09.
Fedderly joined Catherdral City’s Glenn Erickson on the Dubler Cup team reaching the finals losing on the slow, red clay in Turkey.
Last year’s senior player of the year, Bob Duesler of Newport Beach, captured another Gold Slam with partner Jim Nelson of Palm Desert in the 70s bringing Duesler’s gold ball number to more than 85. After a 6-0, 6-0 drubbing of his opponent in the semis at the grasscourt singles, Duesler went to a third set against Herman Ahlers of Las Vegas before putting up another bagel in the third set for his resounding gold ball finish on grass. Duesler and Nelson reached the 70s individual worlds final losing to their teammates in three sets.
In the 65s, San Pedro’s Charleen Hillebrand had knee surgery in August and was unable to play a full schedule. She had to default from the 65s indoors final against La Jolla’s Suella Steel in Overland, Kan. She did beat Steel in the semifinals of the 65s clay courts but lost a hearbreaking third-set tiebreaker in the final to Heide Orth 7-5, 5-7, 7-6 (3). Hillebrand and Steel went on to win the clay court doubles.
Both Hillebrand, Steel and Del Mar’s Cathie Anderson all were part of the Kitty Godfree Cup 65s team that reached the final in Turkey losing to Germany. Hillebrand did end up taking the individual world doubles title but lost to Orth in the singles final.
Playing on his first international cup team, Saul Snyder of San Diego led the U.S. to a dramatic victory over Canada for the men’s 75s Bitsy Grant Cup.
Snyder made the team by virtue of his successful year. He won the 75s clay court singles in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and also took casino online the consolation doubles. He also won the 75s hardcourts in Rancho Santa Fe, the same site where Santa Barbara’s Bob Sherman took the 85s. Snyder was fourth at the grasscourts.
“He really came out of nowhere,” Nichols said. “He had never won a nationals before this year and then to help the U.S. win its only cup on the men’s side. It was just a great year for Saul.” Snyder even made the world 75s doubles final with partner Chuck Nelson of Santa Monica.
Matthiessen and San Diego’s Roz King fell to a tough South African team in the final of the Gibson Cup team competition while King and Dori De Vries fell in the individual world doubles final.
In the 40s on the women’s side Gretchen Magers of San Diego won the hardcourts while Solana Beach’s Martin Barba took the men’s 40s hardcourts with a win in the final over top-seeded and USC men’s coach Peter Smith after dropping the first set, 6-0. He won the next two, 6-2, 6-3.
Again as the No. 2 seed in the clay court final in Savannah, Ga., Barba whipped top-seeded Richard Schmidt 6-2, 6-1 to take another gold ball. Barba was also part of the international Trabert Cup team which finished fourth.
SENIOR PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Matthiessen: The Ultimate Golden Slammer
There are times during the course of the day that 73-year-old Dorothy Matthiessen doesn’t feel like one of the world’s best tennis players for her age. But just a gaze or two at her record over the past several years and there is simply no doubt she is among the finest players in her division.
“I just don’t feel very elite,” said Matthiessen, who has lived in the same Pasadena home for 46 years. “I never have.”
All Matthiessen did this year was win the coveted USTA Gold Slam in both singles and doubles in the 70s division, meaning she won national titles at the hardcourts, indoors, grass and clay courts. For her performance, Matthiessen has been named Inside Tennis’ Southern California Senior Player of the Year.
It wasn’t a new feeling for Matthiessen. She won the Gold Slam singles in ‘04 and in singles and doubles in ‘05 and ‘06. If not for one loss in the final of the hardcourts last year, Matthiessen would be looking at five straight years of Gold Slams. Prior to last year’s loss to Doris De Vries, Matthiessen’s previous defeat was in the 65s Indoors in ‘03. She won the ‘07 world individual title and her only defeat this year came at the world team competition where she was beaten by South Africa’s Janine Liefrig as the United States team finished second at the ITF Super-Seniors Althea Gibson Cup in Manavgat, Turkey.
This year, she beat Representatives of other taurus horoscope 2014 signs will capitulate in such situation and agree that there will be the end of romantic relationships. De Vries in each of the four national finals, all in straight sets, the last two giving up a total of six games in four sets at the grasscourts at Forest Hills, N.Y. and the indoors at Portland, Ore.
All this success for a player who still finds time to work full-time, something that’s almost unheard of for someone playing in the 70s at the national level. Matthiessen owns her own interior design company.
“It really quite remarkable what she’s done,” said husband John, who has tagged along for two of Matthiessen’s 123 gold balls as the pair have twice won mixed doubles national titles. The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year.
So will Matthiessen, who will turn 74 in April, keep at it and try for another Gold Slam in ‘09? “I just don’t picture myself being retired and not having work to do,” she said. “I enjoy it and that’s the bottom line. I don’t want the excuse not to being able to work out and sweat and train because that’s the part I like most about it. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to do it halfway. It’s really not that fun to go out there and be crummy.”
Although she’s been at it for more than 30 years, Matthiessen is a relative late-starter in terms of national-level play. She played as a child growing up in nearby San Marino and the family later moved into the neighborhood where Julie Samson Hayward lived. Samson Hayward would later go on to win 1953 Australian Open doubles title with Maureen Connolly.
Matthiessen remembers fondly playing at The Ojai in the late 1940s in the junior 13s and as an eighth-grader at Huntington School and then later for her high school, the Westridge all girls school in Pasadena which she graduated from in 1952.
“Ojai was the highlight of the year,” Matthiessen recalled. “It was just a magical, magical place for a child. I remember one year we stayed at the El Roblar hotel right across the street from Libbey Park. Louise Brough (four-time Wimbledon singles winner) and her mother were staying at the El Roblar and I thought that was just the greatest thing to see her get ready for a match.”
She also remembers watching Jack Kramer and Frank Parker do battle on the main court at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. As a youth Matthiessen met players like Bill Tilden and Bobby Riggs, who would often come by to see her first teacher Walter Westbrook as his courts at the Huntington Hotel. “It was walking distance from my house,” she said. “Every time you had your advantage or game point it was called ice cream point.”
After a year at Vassar College and then to UC Berkeley to finish her education, Matthiessen settled into family life and started her own business.
It wasn’t until years later that she was reconnected with former neighbor Hayward who encouraged her to enter some national doubles events.
“I just got so bored standing around and waiting for doubles,” she said. “The first singles tournament I played I lost to a player I had no business losing to. I had no wind. I just couldn’t get to the balls and I thought right then that that was a lousy reason to lose.”
Matthiessen began working out and soon built herself into the fittest player in the 40s. “I started off being that way but certainly there are more players out there who are more fit than I am now,” she said. “Certainly Doris and Roz King are.”
Of her friend, rival and sometimes doubles partner De Vries, Matthiessen said: “I really don’t consider it a rivalry, but I know others do. One thing about Dori is she is very, very competitive.”
And the same could be said for 91-year-old Dodo Cheney, who everyone knows has the most gold balls of anyone with more than 370. “It’s funny because to this day Dodo will come up to me like she did in Portland and will say, ‘Dorothy, how many gold balls do you have now?’ Like she’s afraid I might pass her. Can you believe that? No one will ever come close to Dodo’s record. It’s really amazing.”
