Westchester Tennis Ladder Brings Love of the Game to New Heights

Game Set Match! The Westch­ester Ten­nis Lad­der, which launched last sum­mer with ap­prox­i­mately 60 mem­bers, is gear­ing up for its sec­ond sea­son. The brain­child of two self-pro­claimed ten­nis nuts, Michael Moshan and David Zuck­er­man, the lad­der pro­vides Westch­ester’s ad­vanced ten­nis play­ers with am­ple op­por­tu­nity to play and com­pete on lo­cal courts. And de­spite the lock­down, the 2020 in­au­gural sea­son was a tri­umph.

“Ten­nis in Westch­ester had pre­vi­ously been scat­tered among ex­pen­sive coun­try clubs, USTA teams, and a few friends who were lucky to find each other,” Moshan, who lives in Irv­ing­ton, says. “It was mostly dou­bles and so­cial.”

So Moshan hooked up with Zuck­er­man (who lives in Edge­mont) to cre­ate a ten­nis lad­der, sim­i­lar to the one he ran in Williams­burg, Brook­lyn from 2012-2016, be­fore mov­ing to Irv­ing­ton. He ex­plains: “A ten­nis lad­der is sim­ply a rank­ing of play­ers from last to first. Play­ers lower on the lad­der chal­lenge play­ers above them. If the lower player wins, he/​she takes the place of the loser, who drops one rung on the lad­der. Every­one is try­ing to do what­ever they can to climb up the lad­der, while pulling the oth­ers down. It sounds Dar­win­ian but it’s re­ally fun.”

The lad­der is open to both male and fe­male play­ers who rank in the 4.0 to 5.0+ USTA (United States Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion) level equiv­a­lent. “This USTA level (4.0, 4.5 and 5.0) means that your skill ranges from the solid—you can hit the ball pretty well, but your match skills need im­prove­ment—all the way to ex-col­le­giate level,” Zuck­er­man says.

The lad­der is man­aged on an easy-to-nav­i­gate plat­form/​app called Ten­nis­rungs.com, where the play­ers can chal­lenge each other and record the re­sults. The cost for the sea­son is $25.

When the lad­der was an­nounced last spring, Zuck­er­man says the re­sponse was in­tense. “Se­ri­ous play­ers of all ages, men and women, signed up. There were not only ten­nis play­ers in their 40’s and 50’s, there were teach­ing pros, play­ers right out of col­lege, high school­ers who play on their ten­nis team look­ing to sharpen their match play, and even play­ers who never played com­pet­i­tive ten­nis but who could hit the ball well, loved the game, and wanted to com­pete,” Zuck­er­man ex­plains.

“Per­son­ally, I en­joyed it more than play­ing USTA. I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting back out there again and bring­ing more peo­ple in,” says Ryan Merkin, who lives in Tar­ry­town.

“It’s a gem of a lad­der, per­fect for meet­ing a whole lot of ten­nis-lov­ing play­ers who are will­ing to drive all over Westch­ester,” says Mark Kemna, who lives in White Plains. “Last year there was a fan­tas­tic ros­ter of play­ers.”

The end of the 2020 sea­son tour­na­ment capped off a sum­mer of over 500 matches played all over Westch­ester’s pub­lic courts. In ad­di­tion to court ca­ma­raderie, play­ers com­mu­ni­cated, gos­siped about matches, posted post-match pho­tos with match re­caps, and found hit­ting part­ners on the Westch­ester Ten­nis Lad­der’s Face­book page.

“We got to know each other, fol­low each oth­er’s matches and root each other on,” Moshan says. “Play­ers were gra­cious and kind with each other. A ten­nis com­mu­nity de­vel­oped in a re­ally cool way. In Westch­ester where we’re so spread out, plus dur­ing a pan­demic, that’s not an easy thing to do.”

The Westch­ester Ten­nis Lad­der will re­sume in June of 2021. In­ter­ested play­ers can con­tact Michael Moshan and David Zuck­er­man at: westch­esterten­nis­lad­ders@gmail.com.