THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606250115
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Sports
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, COMPASS SPORTS EDITOR
LENGTH: 99 lines
BILL RIDAY was serving and I had him on the ropes.
It was love-40.
Forget the set and forget the match - this is my game, I thought, underneath the sauna-like morning sun that made me feel like a crescent roll baking in an oven.
Whack. He aced me. 15-40.
Unforced error. 30-40.
Down-the-line winner. Deuce.
I was dead. He put away the next two balls and won that game just as he would the other 11, and I thought of my tennis buddy who once asked if 6-0, 6-1 really sounded that much better. In my mind, it would have.
I thought I could take my fairly steady baseline strokes out to the Fergus-Reid courts and at least give my 79-year-old opponent a test. Instead, although I'm 49 years his junior, Riday worked me from side to side and watched as I huffed, puffed, swatted and sweated.
You'd expect nothing less from the ace who swept this year's Virginia Senior Olympics in Williamsburg, coming home with three tennis gold medals: singles, doubles and mixed.
``I like what I can do with a racket,'' he says, pulling a headband over his wisps of white hair as he takes a swig from the old plastic milk container he uses as a water jug. ``Or what people tell me I can do,'' he quickly adds.
Riday - whose name rhymes with Friday - has won the singles competition in the 75-79 bracket at the state's senior games for the past eight years. Twice he's reached the national final in his age range, and his gold at this year's state event earns him the chance to compete at next year's nationals in Tucson. He's also won his share of medals in doubles and mixed, including the mixed bronze at the nationals in San Antonio last year.
``Very few of the seniors will come to net like I do, and I think that's the salvation in my case,'' he says. ``And I have a certain knack for anticipating where the ball is going to go.''
He relies on a beat-up, purple-and-green Spaulding racket that he pulls from a cart full of tennis goodies. ``Just like how it feels,'' he says, while pounding it against his palm. Toweling off on a bench in the shade, he watches two 30ish men on the far court teeing off from the baseline.
``Beautiful,'' he says admiringly at the power. ``Those guys are really going at it. That's something you don't see much of in the 70s and 80s.''
Instead you see delicate touch and wicked spins, the kind of stuff that can really throw off a player used to pace. Riday takes every ball early, in the air if he can, while hunched on the service line in such a way that he can go back if he has to, left or right. Hitting passing shots at him is the logical strategy - either that, or hitting lobs over his petite, 5-foot-6 frame. Neither is easy when you're the one doing the running and the figuring. He's a lefty, which is disconcerting if you're not used to it.
Riday, dressed in white with an ODU cap and shades, is serious about his tennis if not serious in attitude. He often plays twice a day - always five mornings a week at Little Creek Amphibious Base as part of a group of men's doubles players. In the afternoons, he hunts for partners at Northside or Fergus-Reid.
``I'm a lot less serious now about a lot of things. I've learned to laugh, to smile,'' says Riday, who prescribes positive teaching over negative railroading. ``I'm the type who told my daughter growing up, `You can go out after you finish your homework.' Sounds a lot better than, `You're not going out until after you finish your homework.' ''
Riday's only taken a handful of lessons, mostly learning by doing. He could see the courts at the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club from his bedroom window growing up, but mainly he knocked the ball against a backboard for hours at a time. Finally, one day he played at the club but was told afterward that to play again there, he needed to become a member. For $11 a year, he joined.
He played No. 1 singles at Maury in the '30s, and won the city championship at 23.
Riday didn't play much after that, dabbling in other hobbies, such as boating and volunteering with the Coast Guard Auxiliary while he established a career in sales. He attended Old Dominion, but never finished. He and his wife, Janet, have been married 50 years, and they have one daughter, Eileen.
``Tennis just wasn't there,'' he says. ``And ODU, I got a letter from them. I don't know if I'd even be playing now if they hadn't sent me a letter.''
The letter, a decade ago, invited him to an alumni tennis tournament. Riday practiced a month for it, bruising and bloodying himself in the process. But playing mixed doubles that afternoon renewed his interest, and at 69, he picked up a racket again.
``I thought to myself, `Why did I stop it?' '' he says.
The one big change he made to his game, he said, was the switch to a two-fisted backhand four years ago to generate more power. And he chose to concentrate mainly on doubles.
``I prefer doubles because I can play more of it,'' he says.
He does no training, but he's not cocky about it. That's not for everyone, he stresses, but he stays fresh by playing so much. He's limber enough that stiffness rarely sets in. Still, he knows he can get better, and he's working at it.
Riday talks of taking a few lessons, and he's working on playing righthanded to give him better reach at the net. But his philosophy behind all those victories is really quite simple.
``Well, the idea is to get the ball back,'' he says, ``and make it as uncomfortable as you can for him or her to get it back to you.'' ILLUSTRATION: TENNIS
Staff photo by BILL TIERNAN
Bill Riday makes a return during the tennis match with Friedman.
Riday has won several gold medals in the Virginia Senior Olympics. by CNB