Westchester Tennis Ladder Adds Women’s Doubles

On May 8th, the an­nual Westch­ester Ten­nis Lad­der (WTL) will launch its fifth sea­son, this time with a new women-only dou­bles lad­der.

Over 300 play­ers com­peted in last sea­son’s coed lad­ders (Ad­vanced and In­ter­me­di­ate), but this sea­son (May 8-Au­gust 27), women will have their own dou­bles lad­der. WTL cre­ators and lo­cal ten­nis nuts, Michael Moshan of Irv­ing­ton and David Zuck­er­man from Edge­mont, say they are re­spond­ing to a spe­cific de­mand. “Wom­en’s dou­bles is a thing in the sub­urbs,” Moshan says. “It’s com­pet­i­tive, but there’s also some­thing so­cial about it. It’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle less in­tense than sin­gles, and it might at­tract a more ca­sual player — which is awe­some. We def­i­nitely want to sup­port it.”

Fe­male play­ers can join the lad­der as a duo — or WTL can help them find a part­ner. “If you’re a fe­male ten­nis player do­ing one of those weekly clin­ics at a club, you can join one of WTL’s sin­gles lad­ders, or maybe you’re more com­fort­able play­ing dou­bles,” Zuck­er­man says. “Ei­ther way, it’s time to put that train­ing into prac­tice.”

An­other change this year is that the In­ter­me­di­ate Lad­der, in­tro­duced last year for play­ers with a skill level be­tween 3.5-4.0 (United States Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion rat­ings), will now in­clude play­ers at the 3.0 level. “The 3.0 level is still pretty good,” Moshan says. “You can hit, but you typ­i­cally have some trou­ble with move­ment or more ad­vanced shot-mak­ing. These play­ers want to com­pete too.”

Last year, WTL fa­cil­i­tated over 1,200 matches around Westch­ester (in­clud­ing play­ers from Fair­field County, Con­necti­cut) and hosted three end-of-year tour­na­ments.  “The lev­els we saw at the Ad­vanced Lad­der were in­cred­i­ble,” Moshan says.

“We’re thrilled with the com­mu­nity cre­ated around the lad­ders. Westch­ester ten­nis play­ers were starv­ing for matches. They had no ve­hi­cle to meet other play­ers near their level and get in some com­pet­i­tive but friendly matches,” Zuck­er­man adds. “We’re so psy­ched about how much WTL has grown and how much every­one is en­joy­ing the lad­ders.”

Play­ers nav­i­gate their games on the easy-to-use app. They can chal­lenge each other, arrange matches, and record the re­sults. The cost for those who join be­fore May 8th is $50 for the sea­son; it’s $60 for those who join mid-sea­son.

Phil Futernik, who played in last year’s lad­der, says that when he moved to Irv­ing­ton in 2020, “the lad­der opened the door to an amaz­ing net­work of great ten­nis play­ers and gen­er­ally good peo­ple. It’s been so much fun com­pet­ing again with some­thing on the line. Va­mos!”

For more in­for­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter, email westch­esterten­nis­lad­dere@gmail.com