At 55, Papillion’s Roach finally breaks through.
Tennis newsBill Roach, a 55-year-old Tennis pro from Papillion, uses the same adrenaline to fight fires as he does to play Tennis . Two weeks ago, Roach rode that adrenaline rush to gold.
Roach, currently ranked No. 2 in the country in his age group, outlasted 100 other competitors to win the U.S. Tennis Association’s National Men’s 55 Hard Court Singles Championship Nov. 9 in Indian Wells, Calif.
The tournament win was the biggest of Roach’s life and earned him his first gold ball, the award for winning major national tournaments. Roach had won three silver balls, but no golds until this month.
The 5-foot-8 Omaha city firefighter, a former standout basketball player at Beatrice High School and Kearney State College, is the Tennis pro at the Westroads Club in the winter and Shadow Ridge Country Club in the summer.
He’s been playing Tennis since age 12. Once he turned 35 he began competing nationally only every five years, when he entered a higher age bracket.
This time around, Roach had extra motivation to become a champion.
Five years ago he was ranked No. 5 in the nation and, with the No. 1 player injured, thought he had the opportunity to represent the United States as part of the four-man Austria Cup team, the senior version of the Davis Cup . Unfortunately for Roach, a player ranked two spots lower than him was selected because he was the No. 2 player’s doubles partner.
Roach responded by setting two goals: 1. Win a gold ball. 2. Represent the U.S. in the Austria Cup.
“Five years ago, I told myself ‘Let’s train hard,’” Roach said. “‘Let’s stick with it and really compete for the 55s.’”
The Outdoor Hard Court Tournament is the USTA’s final grand slam event of the year — and, according to Roach, “the granddaddy of them all.”
He dropped only one set in six matches. His mental toughness and foot speed lifted him to a 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) finals victory over Californian Geoff Cykman, the man who had eliminated Roach at the previous Grand Slam in Atlanta.
“I won a lot of big points,” Roach said.
One reason Roach won his first gold ball may have been that his friend Phil Landauer, 56, of Oklahoma, chose to compete only in the doubles at the tournament. Landauer is the only man in the country ranked ahead of Roach, and has gone undefeated this year in both singles and doubles, netting him seven of eight possible gold balls. So Roach was the only man besides Landauer and Landauer’s doubles partner to win a gold ball this year.
Landauer has known Roach for 20 years, and, based on Roach’s performance this year, he wouldn’t be surprised if Roach is selected to join him on the island of Majorca, Spain, at the end of April to play in the Austria Cup.
“He’s the ultimate competitor,” Landauer said. “If you’re talking about a guy you’d want in the foxhole with you when you need someone to step up to the plate, it’d be Bill.”
After Roach won the championship point in the tiebreaker of the second set, sealing 20 years of scrapping for first place, Landauer walked up to him and said, “Welcome to the club.”
Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Tennis news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
