Chris Pfund, when he began Friday morning to talk about the looming end of the Montauk Bike Shop, which he is liquidating after 31 years, choked up a bit.

“But,” he said, “I have been very fortunate. I’ve been able to make a living while following my passions. I first began working on rental bikes and mopeds when I was 8 and my father had a hardware store here. So it will be one less sandbox to play in: I’ll still have my sound company and EventPower,” a triathlon promotion company that he heads, along with his wife, Christina Fatsis, and Vicki and Pete Ventura. “And I’ll continue to give corporate bike tours. But it’s the end of an era. . . . It’s sad.”

“The store’s been here since 1963, and we began renting out bikes from the very beginning,” Pfund continued. “Kevin Koltz, who was putting himself through college, had the idea. He supplied hardware stores from Westhampton to Montauk with bikes that summer people would ride, three-speed English racers, and split the profits. It was a good idea. People were a lot more active then. He’d come around and maintain them once a month.” 

“We were the first out here to have bikes and surfboards for rent, and custom T-shirts, and umbrellas and chairs and mopeds. . . . We had 30 or 40 bikes to begin with, and when the hardware store was liquidated in 1999, we spun into bikes.”

When this writer said he remembered fondly riding an American Flyer through the streets of Pittsburgh as a preteen in the early 1950s, Pfund motioned him down to the basement storeroom where, in the back, were, among many other bikes hanging from ceiling racks, two of them.

He, himself, used to ride a bike all the time as a youngster, he said, with a guitar on his back that every now and then he’d play while riding along. There were photos of him doing that, he said in answer to a question, but not immediately at hand.

Kids weren’t riding bikes anymore, he said, and that was to a great degree why he’d made the decision finally to close the Montauk Bike Shop down.

“I used to teach classes on cycling at the high school, for about seven years, and there were kids, at least one or two per class, who had no idea how to ride one! The people you see riding along the shoulders are all older — the younger generation isn’t doing it. It’s not just Montauk, it’s countrywide. The cycling industry is taking big hits. It’s the same in triathlons and golf. Ask Tom Dess at the [Montauk Downs] golf course. He says you can easily get a tee time there in July.”

He had been trying for a couple of years to turn his business around, trying to make it work, “but all the hotels have fleets of 20 of their own bikes now and give them out to their guests for free. Rentals had been our cornerstone. How do you compete? Their insurance must be expensive, I know it is for me, and they’re not even giving them helmets! I’ve tried to make up for it with sales, but it’s not been enough.”

Pfund said he had missed just one day of riding, mostly off-road, on his mountain bike, in the past nine years. He’s been a triathlete since 1984, “and,” he said with a smile, “I always finish fourth.”

“Just out of the money.”

“Just out of the money . . . usually by seconds. My wife will say, ‘Did you do your job?’ ‘Yes,’ I’ll say, ‘I got fourth place.’ I did get second once, at the Schiff [boy scout] reservation in Wading River, in an off-the-road duathlon — run, bike, run. I’d been hit by a car on my bike three days before and broke three ribs. My brother Kurt and I decided to do it anyway. I did the runs, Kurt, who was out of shape, did the bike. I was third in on the first run, and Kurt didn’t lose any time on the bike, so I had to go for it. I swallowed some aspirin and went crazy on the last leg and came in second.”

Yes, he agreed, there were still bike shops in East Hampton and Sag Harbor and Southampton, “but Montauk is different. It closes down about now. You do the summer thing, you make money and you’re feeling fat at around Thanksgiving time before you start sweating buckets again. . . . If I could figure out how to keep this place going I would, but I can’t do one more winter with this place open.”

There were, he thought, about 100 bikes, all brand-new, in the store. He had sold a bunch the day before, including one to Kai Costanzo, whom he sponsored when Costanzo, then 19, set a record in the Montauk Lighthouse triathlon that still stands. Pfund said he expected this past weekend to be busy. A liquidator is overseeing the sell-off.

The family, he said, owns the building. He would be seeking a tenant, “somebody who wants to move in on January 1.”

He wouldn’t move to Charlottesville, Va., as his mother and brother had, he said in answer to a question. “I love Montauk, especially in the winter. If it’s snowing I’ll go cross-country skiing or mountain biking . . . and you don’t have to talk to anybody. It’s the spring I hate,” he said with a smile. “March and April are nasty.”

November 18, 1993

Ellamae Gurney, the right wing, whose goal enabled East Hampton High’s field hockey team to upset the high-riding Miller Place Panthers in the county small schools final, came through again in Saturday’s Long Island championship game with Carle Place, netting a corner-play shot five minutes before halftime. And that proved to be all Bonac needed to keep the Frogs from turning into a Final Four team.

Tom McGlade, a 29-year-old triathlete who lives part time in Amagansett, made a notable marathon debut in New York on Sunday.

Despite an inevitably slow start amid the crush of 27,000-plus bodies coming off the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, McGlade wound up finishing 347th (330th male) in 2 hours, 51 minutes, and 54 seconds.

. . . It was not the fastest New York marathon run by a South Forker — Ray Charron, who now lives in Hawaii, holds the unofficial record at 2:37:33. But McGlade’s time drew plaudits from two veterans: John Conner, a Springs developer who holds the world 55-to-59-year-old indoor mile record (4:53.02), and Cliff Clark of Shelter Island, who trains just about every serious runner out here, of whatever age.

“Spectacular,” said Conner, “considering it probably took him five minutes to get to the line, and considering the heat. When Ray did it, there were about half the people they have now. When I ran, in ’78 and ’79, there were 11,000 and that was a zoo.”

. . . Asked to compare marathoning with triathloning, McGlade said, “A marathon breaks your body down. In a triathlon run, even in the half-Ironman I did, you’re not pounding away at a six-minute pace. It’s a totally different feeling.”

It took McGlade “about 10 minutes to get through the first mile,” and after that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to meet his 2:45 goal. It wasn’t until the second mile that he got into a 6:00-to-6:15 pace.

November 25, 1993

With 29 seconds to go in the first overtime period in a New York State Class C field hockey semifinal played Friday under the lights on Hartwick College’s AstroTurf field, Akron’s Andrea Zurio’s corner-play shot caromed sharply off a defender’s stick, beating Erika Vargas to the right side of the cage, leaving Bonac’s players and faithful (over 200 East Hampton students and parents had made the trip upstate) stunned. 

Sudden victory, sudden death . . . call it what you will, East Hampton’s season was suddenly over.

Bridget Behan’s goal, which tied the score at 1-1 with little more than a minute left in regulation, was her 15th of the season, one shy of Jennifer Vish’s school record. That goal and her “terrific all-around play” that night earned her a berth on the all-state tournament team.

“We played with a lot of heart,” Ellen Cooper, East Hampton’s coach, said. “One thing we have is guts — you can’t take that away from a team. They showed me they had it when they came back. If we’d lost 1-0 in regulation, it would have been devastating, but that goal made everything okay. We dominated the [10-minute] overtime, and lost on a stupid penalty corner. What are you gonna do? In my book, we won.”

Friday, November 30

HALL OF FAME, induction dinner, Bridgehampton High School, 6 p.m.

Saturday, December 1

WRESTLING, Sprig Gardner invitational tournament, East Hampton High School, from 9 a.m.

Sunday, December 2

MEN’S SOCCER, over-30 league, Charruas 1950 vs. Hampton United, Hampton Bays High School, 2 p.m.

Monday, December 3

BOYS BASKETBALL, Pierson at East Hampton, scrimmage, 4:30 p.m.

OMAC PARTY, honorees Dan Farnham, Angelika Cruz, Ryan Fowkes, Rebecca Kuperschmid, and Ethan McCormac, the Palm restaurant, East Hampton, 6-9 p.m.

Tuesday, December 4

BOWLING, East Hampton vs. Sachem, Coram Country Bowl, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, December 5

BOYS SWIMMING, Ward Melville vs. East Hampton, mandatory nonleague, Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, 5:30 p.m.

To look at him, you would not think he’d be so strong, but Richy Rangel, a quiet-spoken East Hampton High School senior who wants to become a computer engineer, is, as Lisa Farbar, the high school’s strength and conditioning coach, says, “extraordinary.”

“He came to me when he was a freshman, having never worked out before,” Farbar said during a conversation at the high school’s Kendall Madison fitness center the other day. “He said he was interested in building strength. I showed him the basic exercises — the deadlift, squat, and bench press, explaining that there was no finish line to strength. It’s a pure science based on reps, sets, and the progression of weight. . . . He’s made significant strength leaps in the last two years.”

So significant, in fact, that as the result of a national competition earlier this month in Las Vegas, at the Golden Nugget, Rangel now holds the world deadlift record for 17-to-19-year-olds in his 132-to-148-pound weight class at 551 pounds. In September, in Albany, he broke the national deadlift record in his age and weight group at 540 pounds, a feat that prompted the International Powerlifting Federation to pay for his hotel room when in Las Vegas, though not his flight out and back. 

“He was casual at first, and then, all of a sudden, he went full bore with powerlifting,” said Farbar.

And last year, he set three state records — in the deadlift (500), squat (340), and in total weightlifting.

“Your knees have to be locked,” Farbar said concerning deadlifting, described by the I.P.F. as “the king of powerlifting disciplines.”

“I missed at 573 — next time I’ll get it,” said Rangel, adding, in answer to a question, that “the more you do it the stronger you get. It’s a skill; you have to work at it.”

“As I always say, ‘Perfect practice makes perfection‚’ ” said his coach.

Rangel said he was “pretty far off‚” when it came to a world record in the squat, 70-plus pounds off. The bench press record in his age and weight group was 280. He was at 205.

He had played soccer when younger, the world record-holder said in reply to a question, but soon realized he couldn’t excel at both. 

He works out every day, basically, though with weights he can get, as it were, not too heavy. In the weeks leading up to competitions, however, he pushes himself.

“Five reps is the max, five sets of five, that’s what you need to build strength,” said Farbar. “You have to own it. Then you add a little more weight. It’s not like bodybuilding, with many reps and many sets.”

“And egg whites for dinner,” this writer chimed in.

Asked about his diet, Rangel said, with a smile, “I don’t go to McDonald’s every day.”

He’ll turn 18 on Jan. 18, and that will move him up into the 18-to-19-year-old class, “where there’s definitely more competition.”

“You have to be strong mentally,” the young powerlifter said when asked how he felt when the pressure was on. “You focus on yourself . . . you do your best.” Farbar, he said, “has been a great help.”

And he, in turn, had been a great help, she said, when it has come to working with other lifters in the fitness room. 

“He’s my go-to guy,” she said of Rangel, with admiration.

The East Hampton High School girls volleyball team, which had cruised through league play undefeated this fall, at 12-0, and which seemed poised to win the county’s Class A championship and possibly go upstate for the first time since 2009, was dealt a cruel blow here Monday by fifth-seeded Kings Park, a well-balanced team like the Bonackers, but one that in the end that afternoon made fewer mistakes.

As result of the Kingswomen’s 25-23, 25-17, 19-25, 23-25, 25-13 win, they are to face Westhampton Beach, a team that East Hampton beat handily twice this season, for the county Class A championship at Suffolk Community College-Brentwood this afternoon. The Hurricanes on Monday defeated Eastport-South Manor in three straight. Kings Park, with a 10-2 record, its losses having come at the hands of Eastport-South Manor, had finished as the runner-up to the 12-0 Sharks in League V. Tonight’s winner is to play the Nassau County Class A champion in the Long Island championship game at Farmingdale State College on Sunday.

The visitors announced their intentions right away as their setter, Carly Estherson, began the match with an ace that Zoe Leach couldn’t handle, and went on to rack up four more points, the last another ace to Leach. Finally, a kill by Mikela Junemann, Bonac’s chief hitting threat, stopped the bleeding, but only temporarily as a double-contact call on East Hampton turned the ball over to Lauren Weir, whose subsequent ace, upping Kings Park’s lead to 7-1, prompted Kathy McGeehan, East Hampton’s veteran coach, to call for a timeout.

In short order, East Hampton found itself in a 12-2 hole, leaving its fans, unused to such a turn of events, wondering if the team could come back. Which, indeed, it did, with Molly Mamay, Erin Decker, Ella Gurney, and Elle Johnson succeeding one another at the service line. 

With the latter, East Hampton’s setter, serving, Weir hit long in going for a kill, after which came a double-contact call, bringing the Bonackers to within three, at 16-13. Moments later, thanks to a solo block at the middle of the net by Gurney, it was 19-17.

McGeehan called another timeout after Amanda Alongi served an ace that Decker couldn’t handle for 21-17. A kill by Madyson Neff when play resumed put the ball in East Hampton’s hands again. Johnson had a good chance to make it 21-19, but erred in trying to tip the ball over the net. A long kill attempt by McKenna Knott narrowed the margin to three again, but a serve by Neff landed just beyond the baseline.

East Hampton, thanks to two kills by Junemann, the first through a double block, an ace by Gurney, and an error by Alyssa Sticco, tied it at 23, raising the home team’s fans’ hopes immensely. 

But it was not to be as Gurney, who, after serving, slid flat out in an unavailing attempt to dig a soft tip over the heads of two teammates, and as Estherson capped the 25-23 win with a hard kill that Neff touched on its way out of bounds.

The second set began much more favorably as Neff notched five winning points before the visitors sided out, but Kings Park, to the chagrin of Bonac’s fans, came right back, taking the lead at 7-6 and ultimately extending it again to 10 points, at 21-11 — a span during which the visitors benefited from a number of East Hampton miscues, including service errors by Johnson, Junemann, and Neff, an ace that Mamay let sail by her, thinking it was headed out, and hitting errors by Neff, Gurney, and Junemann, a team effort, in other words.

A kill by Estherson from midcourt capped the 25-17 win, which put East Hampton at the brink. 

Happily, McGeehan’s crew rebounded, with a 25-19 win, closed out by Johnson’s tip over two blockers, and with a 25-23 victory, which Neff assured with a resounding kill. 

A netted serve by Gurney, an error at the net by Johnson, and an ace to Mamay got the Bonackers off on the wrong foot as the decisive set began, and Kings Park was largely unheaded thereafter. 

When the teams switched sides, the Kingswomen were up 13-8, and soon were leading 15-8 owing to errant kill attempts by Junemann and Nicole Realmuto, one of East Hampton’s middle hitters. Realmuto soon atoned with a tip to the floor, but East Hampton continued to make what in tennis would be called “unforced errors” on its way to a 25-13 loss that sent Kings Park home a winner.

Later, McGeehan said that Kings Park had put more pressure on her players than they had put on Kings Park. Consequently, she said, “We weren’t comfortable the whole night. We were always struggling with our passing and, when it came to our middle hitters, who usually are a big part of our offense, somewhat out of sync. In retrospect, we probably should have set Mikela more on the outside. . . . Kings Park has playoff experience; they’ve been to the states. If we’d had a first-round game, instead of a bye, and had won that, it might have given us the confidence boost that we needed. Even in those sets that we won we ground it out — we were never comfortable.”

This year’s edition, she added, was at least the seventh in her 38-year career that had gone through league play undefeated. “Ninety-six, 2002, ’03, ’04, ’09, 2010, ’18 . . . and maybe ’85 and ’92. . . .

Friday, November 16

GIRLS SWIMMING, East Hampton qualifiers at New York State meet, Ithaca College, from 8 a.m., also Saturday.

Sunday, November 18

MEN’S SOCCER, Suffolk over-30 league, S.F.C. Newcastle vs. Hampton United, Hampton Bays High School, 2:30 p.m.

Thursday, November 22

RUNNING, Town Recreation Department 3 and 6-mile Runs for Fun, Montauk Circle, 10 a.m., check-in from 8 to 9:30.

The second leg of what has come to be known as Montauk’s Grand Prix, the 3.3-mile Dock race, attracted more than 220 entrants Sunday, a record. The entries included scooters, skateboards, baby strollers, bicycles of all sizes, and dogs of all sizes.

Last year’s winner, Armann Gretarsson, was there, as was Ryan Fowkes, the East Hampton High School senior who won the Dock race two years ago. (The high school’s cross-country teams were in Rochester last year at this time, at the state meet.)

Fowkes said before the race began at the Montauk Post Office that he had “underperformed” in the state Class B race at Sunken Meadow State Park the day before, an incentive presumably to do well Sunday, which he did, finishing far ahead of the runner-up, Brian Marciniak, and the rest of the field, in 19 minutes and 30 seconds. (Fowkes’s winning time in 2016 was 20:04.)

“It’s longer than a 5K, isn’t it?” Marciniak was to say later, as a large crowd was gathered outside the Dock, many with glasses of beer that George Watson and his son Chris had provided gratis to the adult finishers.

“We hit a downhill with about a mile to go, and he took off,” Marciniak said of the winner. “The wind was in our faces . . . I felt like I was running into the wind the whole time. I thought it was longer than a 5K. You could really feel it in that extra two-tenths of a mile. . . .”

Kevin Barry, Fowkes’s coach, said in discussing the state meet that “the Class B race was the fastest of the day. They went out really fast, and Ryan got caught up in it. But while he’s run better times, he had a great season, and he led his team to a great season,” second to Westhampton Beach in the county Class B meet. “He did a great job.”

Fowkes, by the way, is to be honored as the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s male youth athlete of the year at its holiday dinner on Dec. 3.

Two East Hampton High School girls cross-country runners, Ava Engstrom (who had finished in the top half of Saturday’s state Class B race, bettering her seeding by five spots) and Bella Tarbet, who are sophomores, were third and fourth on Sunday, and Dylan Cashin, a seventh grader who is expected to join Engstrom and Tarbet on the varsity soon, was seventh.

Gretarsson, a Hither Hills lifeguard who sports a red beard, had said before the race began that he hadn’t been running seriously lately (though he’d just finished an hour and a half of mountain biking). He was sixth. 

When last seen, at the Dock last year, he said he wasn’t sure whether he’d head north to Vancouver or south to Mexico once having seen Yosemite. He had gone south, to Baja, he replied when questioned Sunday, adding that he’d surfed in Donegal, Ireland, last month, and would surf in Iceland through December before heading to Puerto Rico for more surfing.

“The surf in Donegal was spectacular, though the people were the main attraction,” Gretarsson said. “The stone buildings were super old, and the bartenders were pretty ancient too. The people there know everything about their history. . . .”

Liam Fowkes, Ryan’s younger brother, a seventh grader, asserted, in reply to a question, that Bill Herzog, who first announced his retirement in 2009, had really and truly done so this year. Nick Finazzo, he said, was now the East Hampton Middle School’s cross-country coach.

“Nick’s been doing a great job,” said Barry, who had a dozen freshmen this fall on his team, which, with 25 on the roster, was his biggest squad ever.

Further concerning the state meet, Barry said Kal Lewis, a Shelter Island junior, had repeated as the state’s Class D champion, distancing himself from the top seed, “the freshman phenom from Beaver River,” Colton Kempney, on the down slope of Sunken Meadow’s dreaded Cardiac Hill.

Sunken Meadow’s second mile, leading up to the top of Cardiac, was the toughest cross-country mile he knew of, said Barry, “though the last mile, which is all on the flat, is the easiest.”

Lewis said in an interview after his Sunken Meadow win that he intends to run next in the Nike Northeast regionals in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 24, and, should he qualify, at the Nike nationals in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 1. To run in the Nike nationals had been a dream of his, he said, since ninth grade.

George Watson, who began overseeing a trio of October running, cycling, and rowing races in the 1970s (so he could be crowned the winner of all of them), was at the finish line, handing out slips to the adults and kids attesting to their placements, the last race director presumably to eschew computer chips. Those races faded away eventually, though Chris Watson revived the road race, which benefits Montauk’s senior citizen nutrition center, in 2010.

The Old Montauk Athletic Club was expected to receive about $5,000 from the proceeds of Saturday’s Brewathlon relay race in Montauk, a rowing, biking, running, rowing contest that originally was to have taken place at the Montauk Brewery on Oct. 27.

“It rained that day and rained again the next Saturday,” said the race director, Caroline Cashin, who, as a result, lost 10 of the 33 teams she’d initially signed up — the same number as last year. 

“Everybody looks forward to it,” she said of the Brewathlon. “It’s fun and challenging, though you don’t have to train all that hard. The distances are sprint distances. You go out hard and maintain.”

This year, she said, “We required that all the teams have two women, which, while it may have slowed the times a little bit, made it more competitive.”

As was the case last year, Neil Falkenhan’s Cobra Command team won, though it repeated without the help of Mike Bahel, who was jettisoned in favor of a female biker, Natalia Woodward.

“I won the first row,” Neil Falkenhan said, “but by the time of the run we’d dropped to fourth. Drew [Falkenhan, his brother] made it all up on the run, and Sara [Colletti, an East End Row instructor in Southampton] held on for the win,” in one hour, seven minutes, and two seconds.

“I can’t breathe,” Colletti said after getting up from the rowing machine and walking over to the curb, where she sat down.

(It was said that Neil Falkenhan’s 5,000-meter row time was only 18 seconds shy of the world record in his age group.)

Before the Brewathlon began, Sinead FitzGibbon, when asked if she’d brought down “any ringers from Maine,” as she has in the past, said, “No, but I do have one from Massachusetts who’s won two golds and a silver in world championships.”

FitzGibbon was referring to Jill Hathaway of Amherst, who was in 2015 the United States rowing masters champion, and who, in 1989, was the National Collegiate Athletic Association champion in that sport. 

With Hathaway leading off, and with Dan Roberts biking the 15K (9.3-mile) course, FitzGibbon running the 5K, and Ed Cashin finishing up with a 2,500-meter ergometer row, the Truth Training team wound up losing by 26 seconds to Cobra Command.

Bahel’s Silver Fox team was third, in 1:08.33. Blood, Sweat and Beers was fourth, in 1:08.38, and the top 10 was rounded out by OMAC (1:09.30), Montauk Brewery 2 (1:10.06), Railway Fitness (1:11.41), Don’t Be a Baby A (1:11.52), Team Kipper (1:11.53), and Don’t Be a Baby B (1:12.23).

Jon Jamet’s 15:47 was the day’s fastest bike time. John Broich’s 16:42 was the second fastest, after which came Mike Monahan (16:53), Jacques Franey (17:03), Roberts (17:03), Bobby Reich (22:40), and Kat Weill (25:20).

Asked about the recent New York marathon, which she ran for the first time, in 3:21, FitzGibbon said, “It’s as epic as ever. There’s no more exciting race than the New York marathon. . . . My secret weapon was that I slept nine to 10 hours going into it. I felt like a 28-year-old! I thought the wheels would fall off, but they never did.”

Beth Feit, one of FitzGibbons’s half- dozen Truth Training training partners, had been, by contrast, too keyed up, and consequently had suffered from “an adrenaline crash” coming out onto First Avenue from the 59th Street Bridge.

“This [5K] was hard, but better than the marathon!” said Feit a while later, confessing that she’d been “overconfident” going into New York, and had thus let her mind lead her astray. She would run a better race the next time, she said. Meanwhile, she was proud to say she, despite “hitting the wall” early on, had finished.

Henrika Conner of OMAC, when asked who the club’s honorees would be at its holiday dinner at the Palm restaurant on Dec. 3, said the list included Dan Farnham, as its male athlete of the year, Angelika Cruz, as its female athlete of the year, Ryan Fowkes, as its male youth athlete of the year, Rebecca Kuperschmid, as its female youth athlete of the year, and Ethan McCormac, as the first recipient of the William A. O’Donnell youth swimming award. The latter three are to receive $1,000 grants.

Billy O’Donnell, who died recently, at the age of 69, is to receive the Founders Award posthumously.

Nick West, a former East Hampton High School soccer star, scored his 25th and 26th goals of the season Sunday as Messiah College, for which he plays, defeated Johns Hopkins 2-0 in a second-round National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III playoff game.

These were the first goals in four games for the East Hampton striker, who earlier in the season scored in 15 straight games (smashing a Messiah record and tying a national D-III one), a span during which he was not only D-III’s high-scorer, but the high-scorer in the nation no matter the division, a category in which he continues to contend.

“Nick’s a team player,” Don McGovern, one of his coaches here, said over the weekend. “When he’s double-teamed he passes off.”

West had two assists in a 5-0 shutout of Baruch College in the first round. Messiah, whose record stands at 16-0-3, and the State University at Cortland are to play a third-round match Saturday.

Frank Ackley, who last was heard from a year ago, phoned the other day to say he and a doubles partner with whom he’d been playing for the first time had made it to the semifinals of the United States Tennis Association’s clay court championships recently in New Orleans.

“A lot of these guys, that’s all they do, travel from one tournament to another,” Ackley, who lives in Springs and will turn 70 on Feb. 12, said on his return. “They all played on the circuit when they were younger.”

Considering that he and his partner, Rollin Rhone, a Southern Californian, were unseeded in this tournament, one of four U.S.T.A. “majors,” the others being the national hard courts, national grass courts, and national indoors, they’d done exceedingly well, said Ackley, who was helped in getting ready for it at the East Hampton Tennis Club by Gary Clermont, the pro, and by Bob Kouffman and Vince Horcasitis.

The 32-draw tournament, played at “the oldest tennis club in the country,” drew what the tournament director said was a surprising number of top-notch teams, “the best of the best, the top five ranked singles players and the top five ranked doubles teams in the country. . . . If you don’t get your first serve in and you have a weak second serve, you’ll eat it every time.”

“We complement each other well,” he continued. “Rollin, I call him Double R, is laid back and I’m kind of fiery. We won our first match 6-1, 6-0, against guys from Pennsylvania and Florida. The guy from Florida won two rounds in the singles. We played guys from Louisiana and Toronto in the second round and beat them 6-2, 6-1. We beat the fourth-seeded team, a guy from Georgia, the other from Mississippi, in the quarters, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5. That three-hour match was played under the lights, we were the only ones on, and we played before a huge crowd. Judy [Soman, his partner] was there, friends from Florida. . . .”

“We finally got up 5-4 with Rollin serving. He went up 40-0, but we lost the next five points in a row. It was back and forth after that until we got a break and I held for 7-5.”

Ackley and Rhone’s semifinal opponents were the top seeds, Phil Landauer of Ohio and Tom Smith of Georgia, and they played like it, he said. “They beat us 6-3, 6-4 . . . they were a better team, they went on to win the tournament. Playing tournaments is all they do.”

Still, it had been a good showing, Ackley said, the best he’d done in one of the U.S.T.A.’s major tournaments, “with all the big boys. Doing what we did showed us that we can play with the top guys. . . . I really enjoy beating the seeded guys. They come on like peacocks and go back to the club like parakeets.”

He would have to add some speed to his kick serve, Ackley concluded. He’d been broken twice and his partner three times in the semifinal match. And he would “have to work on [his] conditioning for sure. . . . I’m not used to playing that much.”

Asked what he’d been doing recently when it came to conditioning, he replied, “I’ve been getting up from the couch and walking to the fridge.”

It’s not the first time Ackley’s said that in addition to tennis he should work out more. After reaching the quarterfinals at the national clay courts last year, with another partner, he said he would try to get himself into fighting shape over the winter, most of which he and Soman spend in Melbourne, Fla.

“If you’re not in shape,” he said at the time, “you begin sucking air after the first couple of games and your game drops — you start going for winners, hitting riskier shots, and that’s not my style.”