Lobsters win, but pushed out of playoffs by Kastles
Everything should have gone their way. The Boston Lobsters had to beat the New York Buzz last night for a playoff spot in World Team Tennis. And they did, topping the Buzz, 20-16, on the strength of Jan-Michael Gambill’s impressive serve.
His 5-0 men’s singles domination of Ryan Lipman was his best effort as a singles competitor since his 5-2 win against Andre Agassi of the Philadelphia Freedoms. Gambill had built a reputation for beating those name players.
But the Lobsters needed one more thing. They needed the Springfield Lasers to dump the Washington Kastles, who held the tiebreaker over Boston.
However Kastles owner Mark Ein had one trick up his sleeve. Ein simply called up Nadia Petrova and asked if she could help the team make its first WTT playoffs. Petrova, the 10th-ranked women’s player in the world, said yes.
Two matches later, predictably, the Kastles were in the playoffs and the Lobsters were out.
On Tuesday, in her first of two matches, Petrova went 15-3 in three events as the Kastles beat the Buzz, 23-12, to take control of their destiny. Petrova won her women’s doubles match, 5-3, last night and clinched the playoff spot with a 5-2 mixed doubles win alongside Leander Paes. Washington won, 21-14, over Springfield.
Last night, the Lobsters could beat the Buzz, but just couldn’t beat a freshly-signed name player who was more than 450 miles away.
The move has made Ein the bad guy in the movie that is the Lobsters’ season.
“I do what I am capable of to put the best team on the court all year,’’ said Lobsters owner Bahar Uttam. “I can’t control what’s going on with other teams in the league.’’
The Kastles also trotted out Wimbledon champion and second-ranked women’s player Serena Williams four times this year. Both teams were 6-7 going into the night.
Without the household names, the Lobsters built a team for playoff contention with chemistry and consistency.
Most WTT teams sport different lineups and resort to alternates frequently. The Lobsters’ lineup consisted of Gambill, James Auckland, Raquel Kops-Jones, and Stephanie Foretz in all but two home matches. In those two matches, Hall of Famer Martina Navratilova took the place of Kops-Jones.
“I’m confident in this team, how they’ve played together,’’ said Uttam.
There are no rules to prevent signing players to contracts even into the WTT’s two-match playoffs. Most of the best women’s players in the world are competing in the Nurnberger Gastein tournament in Austria this weekend or the Istanbul Cup in Turkey next weekend, as part of the WTA tour.
WTT commissioner Ilana Kloss approved the move before the Kastles’ match Tuesday. It ended up pushing the Lobsters out of the playoffs.
