Levy’s 8.0 team wins national championship

While recruiting players from both the east and west side of the state of Georgia, Mark Levy’s team, whose first goal was simply to win the state tournament in Savannah, wound up winning the National USTA 8.0 championships held in Surprise, Ariz., on April 1-3.

“I couldn’t get enough players from the Columbus area so I knew guys from the other side (of the state). They didn’t have a team so we combined forces,” said Mark Levy, the team captain. “Our goal was to win the state and title and honestly we just kept on going.”

The Levy team kept on going by going 6-0 in the state tournament as a team, 5-0 in the Southern sectional held in Dothan, Ala., and then 5-0 at the national tournament with a combined 45-3 record in all sets played.

This is the second Columbus CORTA team to win a national in Surprise in the last 12 months as CORTA’s 9.0 mixed doubles team won Nationals in 2015.

Columbus opened play on April 1 and were to play Hawaii, Missouri Valley and Northern sections in their group to advance to the semifinals. Columbus won all those matches 3-0 to advance against Midwest.

“Out of all 16 sections represented, we were the only team there with only six players so all of us knew we had to play every match,” said Levy of his team efforts.

Both local players Kim Glass (did not play at state level) and Ron Hale (illness) were unable to play in the national tournament.

Against Midwest, Levy and his partner Howard Rugaber and Dick Anderson and Joe Simon won to make the lead 2-0. That left Randy Scott and Jim Parker still playing.

“We decided to stop play in the final match that was still going so we could save ourselves for the finals,” said Levy. “And let me tell you, they gave us exactly 30 minutes of time to turn around and play that championship match.”

CORTA met the Southwest champion which was Phoenix, Ariz., in the finals.

“They were confident because Surprise is so close that the team stayed home right there and were used to the hard courts,” said Levy. “That was one thing we had to get used to because we played on clay for the state and clay in Dothan for Southern and then played the National tournament on hard courts.” Levy reported.

“Phoenix won No. 1 doubles and our team won No. 3 doubles and that left me and Howard on the court to decide the match,” said Levy. “We had lost the first set 7-6 but won the second 6-0 and then won the tiebreaker 10-5 to win the national crown.”

It had been 10 years since Scott and Levy had been to a national tournament. The last time was in Palm Springs in 2006 and the team did not make it out of the round robin competition.

“It was very satisfying to have our six players who played every match come home champions,” Levy said of his team.

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Levy’s 8.0 team wins national championship."