LETTER OF THE WEEK

The well-deserved tribute to former UCI Tennis coach, Greg Patton,

written by Pilot reporter Richard Dunn, really hit home to this retired

UCI biology professor and should-be-retired tennis hack (“UCI -- One wild

ride for one of the world’s friendliest tennis coaches,” Nov. 27). But

what especially resonated was the statement that “Patton’s favorite

highlight is coaching UCI to an upset victory over UCLA in the 1989

regional final, [with] an Anteater squad featuring [Trevor] Kronemann,

Mark Kaplan and Mike Briggs.”

I attended that final, mostly because Trevor, Mark and Mike were

students that year in my class on “Human Conception to Birth.” At the end

of the quarter, I recall announcing the triumph to the class and that

both Trevor and Mark had been named All-American that year.

The highlight of my own short-lived tennis stardom also occurred in

1989 when Trevor and Mark got hooked up with me in a Tennis Team --

faculty round robin, a sort of mixed doubles of tennis team members with

a bunch of misfit faculty players. With Trevor and Mark as my alternate

partners, how could I lose?

I did not lose, and thus won the faculty cup for the only time in a

number of years of trying. My strategy was simple. I hugged the net on my

side and told Trevor or Mark that the other three fourths of our side of

the court was theirs.

I failed to win the cup the next four times before my retirement. Greg

Patton, who led the Newport Dukes and the Idaho Sneakers to two

championship matches and failed all times to win the finals, said “[he

was] the Marv Levy of World Team Tennis.”

Marv Levy, reporter Dunn reminds us, led the Buffalo Bills to four

Super Bowls and lost every time. Marv Levy also was my classmate in

college where we both were elected charter members of our first Phi Beta

Kappa chapter. This old tennis hack plans to meet Marv again in June at

our 50th college reunion. Maybe I will challenge him to a game of tennis.

HOWARD M. LENHOFF

Professor Emeritus, UCI School of Biological Sciences