25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports 09.29.11

September 4, 1986

    In the limelight on Aug. 26, after he had upset John McEnroe 1-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 in the first round of the United States Open, Paul Annacone, the 23-year-old East Hampton-reared tennis professional, found himself cast out of it two days later as he lost 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 to Aaron Krickstein in the second round.

    “It’s been a pretty draining week for Paul,” said his father, Dominic, on Tuesday. “For me too. I just hope he maintains his sanity through all this. . . . I have a lot of respect for these pros — emotionally, tournament tennis is incredibly wearing.”

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    Milan Holecek, a Czechoslovak singles and doubles champion who has spent the last two summers teaching at the Buckskill Tennis Club in East Hampton, said recently he knew why the Czechs were so good. “The problem in the United States is that those who have enough money to pay for all the training and traveling are usually not hungry enough to get good.”

    “I used to teach a kid in Florida who had great potential and claimed to be extremely interested in tennis, but he wasn’t willing to work — he really didn’t need to. That would never happen in Czechoslovakia, where he would have been fighting for his life to qualify for playing abroad.”

    . . . He looks for another Czech sweep at the United States Open this year. “Lendl will win. . . . Among the women, Martina will win — no question. She is stronger than all the other women put together.” — Philip Boroff

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    Kevin Barry of Shelter Island and Dr. Bob Semlear of Sag Harbor were in the van of Monday’s 6.2-mile Great Bonac Foot Race, as they had been a week before in a 3-miler here to benefit the American Cancer Society, but this time Barry won, in 33 minutes and 4 seconds, besting his training partner, Semlear, by 57 seconds.

September 11, 1986

    East Hampton High School’s football coach, Ted Meyer, thinks the Bonackers, with 13 returning lettermen, “really have a good chance” to win League Seven, and thus gain a postseason Division Three playoff spot.

    . . . The offensive line, which Meyer says “can be one of the best East Hampton has ever had,” includes, at center, Bill Barbour, a 6-0, 202-pound sophomore; at guard, Peter Cooper, a 6-0, 190-pound senior, and Orlando Blowe, a 6-2, 205-pound senior, and, at tackle, David DiSunno, a 6-3, 225-pound junior, and Joe Luksic, a 6-1, 195-pound senior. Barbour’s backup will be Jason Menu, a junior; Cooper and Blowe’s, Steven Loper and David Carmichael, both juniors, and DiSunno and Luksic’s, Rich Ross and Bill Almeraz, both seniors.

September 18, 1986

    Jim Bolster, 31, the Columbia University swimming coach, repeated Saturday as champion of the Mighty Hamptons Triathlon in Sag Harbor, besting 501 other entrants over a 36-mile course in 2 hours, 35 minutes, and 44 seconds.

    Bolster won Mighty Hamptons last year in 2:41:36, but in Saturday’s race choppy seas in Noyac Bay caused the swim leg, ordinarily a mile and a half, to be cut by a half-mile.

    . . . Bolster said that the swim was “brutal . . . one of the roughest” he had experienced. His left hand and elbow were skinned as the result of a fall in the 25-mile bicycle leg on a newly paved stretch of road. Despite that, he logged the fastest bike time of the day, a 1:07:54, building up a six-minute lead going into the 10-mile run.