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Spectators were treated to some beautiful weather and outstanding competition across several different age groups on Saturday at Binney Park in the annual Greenwich Town Tennis Tournament. The culmination of two weeks of matches, the field featured an epic four-hour women's final and an impressive showing from two young competitors in the 17-and-under final.
"People don't join the tournament who are beginners," town tennis director Pat Cianciulli said. "It's usually pretty well-seasoned players joining the tournament. The men's open always has quality players. The ladies singles are very good players. It's good to see quality matches."
Perhaps the most entertaining match of the day was the under 17 singles final between Collin McCullough and Chris Salisbury, both just 13 years old. What made the match even more impressive was that both boys had to beat 16-year-olds to get to the finals. In an evenly played match, McCullough attacked the net often and Salisbury featured a very strong backhand. Salisbury seemed to keep coming up with the big hits though, and took the match 7-5, 6-4.
"I feel like I had it the whole way," Salisbury said. "[McCullough] was really good. He had a pretty good cross-court forehand I couldn't get to. I feel pretty good."
The women's 35 & over singles took almost four hours for Kat Okamura to finally beat Meg DeCaro. Both women matched volley for volley in almost every set. Okamura took the match 5-7, 6-1, 6-4. The Men's Open Singles final featured Felix Yamasoto upsetting three-time defending champion Rich Harris 6-7 (7-4 tiebreaker), 6-4, 6-3. Harris got redemption in the 35 and over category defeating Santiago Gilfond 6-1, 6-3. Vincent Ferraro, who beat Andy Reid in the 50 and over singles 6-2, 6-3, hopes the word gets out for more competitive tennis players to sign up for the town tournament.
"I'm glad the town runs it, but I'd like to see more people get into it because there's a lot of great players in Greenwich," Ferraro said. "It's a lot of fun and I look forward to it."
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