James Stout And Will Newnham Capture New York Athletic Club Invitational    
by Rob Dinerman

NYAC Invitational Champs James Stout, left, and Will Newnham

Dateline January 31st --- Trailing two games to one against a fearsome top-seeded pair of opponents who have been racking up almost all the major amateur doubles tournaments over the past 13 months, second seeds James Stout and his fellow Racquet & Tennis pro Will Newnham rallied to overtake Addison West and Will Hartigan by a 15-14, 12-15, 5-15, 15-9, 15-9 tally early Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 2016 New York Athletic Club Invitational. West and Hartigan, winners in calendar 2015 of the William White, the Silver Racquets and the Gold Racquets, had surmounted a two games to one deficit in their 15-12 fifth-game semifinal win over Tim Wyant and Steve Scharff, and they seemed to have commandeered the momentum when they mounted a 6-1 surge from 3-8 to 9-all in the fifth game of the final. But at this juncture Newnham, who had borne the brunt of the West/Hartigan attack throughout the match, contributed four untouchable winners to his team’s 6-0 sprint to the tape.

   The 16-team draw was undoubtedly the strongest and deepest in the seven-year history of this tournament, and there were upsets and close matches all the way through. Defending champions Josh Schwartz and Peter Kelly, after winning the first two games of their round-of-16 tilt with Rob Dinerman and Will Morris, dropped the third and trailed 14-13 in the fourth before rescuing that game 15-14. They then lost their quarterfinal to Patrick Haynes and Andres Vargas, the first setback in this tournament in five years for Schwartz, who had won this event three-straight times with Hamed Anvari from 2012-14 before successfully teaming up with Kelly a year ago. Haynes and Vargas were then out-played by the eventual champs Stout and Newnham, who themselves were nearly pressed to a fifth game in their quarterfinal with Eric Christiansen and current Dickenson College (PA) coach Chris Sachvie, but were able to salvage the close-out fourth 15-14.

   While this series of hectic battles were being fought in the draw’s bottom half, Hartigan and West triumphed over first former Brunswick Academy teammates Parker Hurst and Sam Haig and then Brad Hathaway and Terence Li to qualify for their route-going semi against Scharff/Wyant, quarterfinal victors over Eric Bedell and Dylan Patterson in a rugged four-game contest. During most of the first game of the final pitting two Racquet & Tennis members against two Racquet & Tennis pros, Hartigan and West frequently seemed on the verge of decisively asserting themselves without ever actually doing so. Stout and Newnham kept staving them off and staying within range on the scoreboard all the way to 13-14, at which stage they benefited from two consecutive fortuitous winners --- the first on a Stout inside-out backhand that took a strange bounce that caused it to veer sharply down the right wall before Hartigan could react, and the second when a reflex Newnham volley off a blast by West trickled tantalizingly over the tin --- that enabled them to come away with a one-game-to-love lead.

   Chastened and to some degree galvanized by the way a game that had seemed to be theirs to win had slipped away from them in this fickle fashion, West and Hartigan both elevated their level, controlling the second game and routing their opponents in the one-sided third, during the last half of which Newnham appeared to be wilting beneath the constant barrage. West was crushing his backhand cross-courts at him, and Hartigan was scoring on sharp forehand reverse-corners to the front-right and throwing in frequent Philadelphia angles to the back-right as well. But in the fourth game, Stout, the reigning world rackets champion, became a more formidable factor and Newnham found a second wind, catching West hovering behind the red line and holding his own in their cross-court battles.

    After evening the match at two games apiece with a late four-point burst, Newnham and Stout, as mentioned, took a significant early lead in the fifth as well, aided by some aggressive winners and a quartet of West/Hartigan errors. But when Hartigan (who began his team’s comeback bid with a nervy drop shot from deep in the court) and West then amped up the pace in a blistering comeback that resulted in three stroke calls against Newnham and tied the score at 9-all, it definitely looked like they were on their way to yet another addition to their already-sizable list of impressive tournament wins. It is therefore a tribute to Stout , who throughout the match was everywhere he needed to be with his court coverage and timely, imaginative winners, and especially to Newnham, who bent but never broke and who came up with perhaps the best extended stretch of his career during the final six points, that they were able to repulse the tide against them in a flurry of all-court exchanges, every one of which ended with one of them conjuring up the final defining salvo. Newnham’s slew of crunch-time winners included two inside-out three-wall nicks, a floor-hugging reverse corner and a match-ending cross-drop that caught West off guard and behind the red line.

    In the other NYAC Invitational draws, the men’s singles was won by Clinton Leeuw, who rose superior to Sachvie in the semis and to former Trinity College all-American Michael Ferreira (semis winner over junior sensation Sam Scherl) in a high-quality though straight-game final. In the women’s events, Julie Cerullo first defeated Annie Madeira in the singles final and then teamed up with Elise O’Connell to win the doubles final in four games over Kelly Whipple and Laura Pyne.