Club To Hold Widmer Invitational
Fourteen-ounce twill khakis, white cap and polo required; facial hair encouraged in honor of Tim Widmer; two-handed backhand winners score double
Equipment subcommittee to enforce fabric weight at check-in; beard length unmeasured unless entries are close
Widmer, the tournament's namesake, will not say whether he plans to enter his own event
By Anita Bath·Staff Reporter
Tim Widmer drills a two-handed backhand at Thursday's practice in the khakis he has owned since 2014.
“If a man can hold a line for eleven seasons, the least the club can do is ask everybody else to dress like him for a weekend.”
ROWAYTON, Conn., Sept. 6 —The Rowayton Paddle Club will stage its first Widmer Invitational this month, a members' tournament requiring every entrant to wear fourteen-ounce twill khakis, a white cap and a polo shirt, encouraging facial hair in honor of Tim Widmer, and awarding double credit for any point won on a two-handed backhand, tournament organizers confirmed Friday.
The khaki requirement will be enforced at check-in by the tournament's equipment subcommittee, which has set the minimum fabric weight at fourteen ounces and will turn away any pair judged business casual rather than court legal, according to Jordan Giles, the assistant captain of Rowayton D and vice chairman of the subcommittee's twill-weight verification effort.
Facial hair carries no scoring bonus and is not mandatory, subcommittee members stressed; entrants are simply encouraged to grow it, in the general direction of Mr. Widmer's own mustache, which has been a fixture of the club's Saturday lineup for eleven seasons.
Mr. Widmer, 32, plays ninth of 22 rostered players on Rowayton D, which competes in Division 6 on Saturdays. His player-tracking index rose three points this season, to 32 from 29, an increase the club's rating algorithm has not explained and Mr. Widmer has not been asked to explain either.
"He's been wearing the same pair of khakis since before I had this job," said Fred Schweizer, Rowayton D's captain, whose tenure has survived two winters and one immigration inquiry. "If a man can hold a line for eleven seasons, the least the club can do is ask everybody else to dress like him for a weekend."
The tournament's scoring committee confirmed that any point won on a two-handed backhand, by either player, on either side of the net, will count twice toward the final tally, a rule intended to reward variety but expected, in practice, to reward whichever team notices first.
Nathan Snyder, reached for comment, spoke for eleven minutes on the subject, most of it devoted to Goodhart's law — the idea that once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure — before acknowledging he did not know whether a lob volley qualified.
Beard length will not be measured, organizers said, though the equipment subcommittee has reserved the right to measure it if entries are close. "We don't have a ruler out," Mr. Giles said. "We have a ruler in the car."
Mr. Widmer, reached by telephone Thursday, said he was flattered and then made a pun about khaki being "a neutral color, like Switzerland," before declining to say whether he intended to enter his own tournament. He drives a Subaru Outback with 161,000 miles on it and said the mileage was "not relevant to paddle."
The khakis he wore to Thursday's practice, entrants were assured, will not be the standard against which their own are judged. Mr. Widmer said he has owned the pair since 2014 and sees no reason to replace them before the tournament, or after it.
