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Husband and wife duo Steve Geller and Susan Smith of East Quogue won the National Husband-Wife Grass Court Tournament in Providence, Rhode Island and captured the gold ball in the 100s and the bronze ball in the 120s.
Tennis has been the basis of the marriage between Steve Geller and Susan Smith. After all, the two met 15 years ago when Steve was Susan’s coach at Sportime in Quogue.
“Yes, very cliché … I married the tennis pro,” Ms. Smith joked.
Tennis has continued to be at the forefront of the East Quogue couple’s marriage, with the two often playing, and winning, mixed doubles tournaments at Sportime over the past few years. Both also play team tennis through the United States Tennis Association, and this past March, the duo played in their first national championship tournament together, the National Husband-Wife Clay Court Championships in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they reached the semifinals.
Then, earlier this month, Ms. Smith and Mr. Geller competed in the Husband-Wife Grass Court National Championships at Agawam Hunt in Providence, Rhode Island, where they captured both a gold ball in the 120 combined-age division and a bronze ball in the 100 division.
Ms. Smith and Mr. Geller won their gold ball with set scores of 5-7, 6-2, 7-5, in what was a two-and-a-half hour match. The pair entered both the 120 and 100 divisions because they were unsure when they’d be able to play on a grass court again.
The pair join another East Quogue couple, Alan and Judy Schreiber, who earned a silver ball together at the National Husband-Wife Doubles Clay Court Championships at Olde Providence Racquet Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently.
“What are the odds that little East Quogue would have two national husband-wife champions,” Ms. Smith said.
Whether Ms. Smith, a director in the real estate group PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Mr. Geller, who is now retired, would be able to compete together in the husband-wife tournaments was in question all of last year when, just like for the millions of people around the world, 2020 hit both particularly hard health wise. In July 2020, Mr. Geller needed to have spinal surgery to fix a herniated disc in his back that put him on the shelf for three months and required physical therapy to regain strength in one of his legs.
Earlier in 2020, right when the pandemic began, Ms. Smith became very ill with an extremely rare disorder called “semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome,” or SCDS, for short. It occurs when a trauma creates an abnormal opening between the uppermost semicircular canal in the inner ear and the brain. The condition causes problems with hearing and balance, and it caused Ms. Smith to have odd symptoms, forcing her to stop playing tennis.
In August 2020, Ms. Smith and her husband traveled to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore so she could undergo a seven-hour inner ear and brain surgery to repair the hole. After the surgery, Ms. Smith had at least six months of physical therapy and started to hit tennis balls again this past January.
It wasn’t easy when she got back on the court, Ms. Smith said, “but the more I played, the better I felt. My therapist said that playing tennis was a great way for me to retrain my brain and adjust to having a repaired, abnormal vestibular system.”
Ms. Smith said that going through the medical issues that she and her husband went through made them both appreciate life while also growing their love of tennis.
“We never gave up,” she said. “I think we inspired each other. I proved to myself that I could not just play again, but that I could compete.”
Ms. Smith says that she and husband are both feeling much better after their health issues. Mr. Geller, she said, is feeling close to, if not fully, 100 percent. Just over 10 months from her surgery, Ms. Smith’s recovery is not so cut and dry, she said. She may never get back to feeling normal, she said, but she’s close.
“I think getting sick, at least for me, put things into perspective,” she said. “We always wanted to do these tournaments [and] when I got sick I never thought I would play again, so it really put things into perspective, you know, life is too short to come up with an excuse of why not to play.”
Next up for the couple will be the National Husband-Wife Hard Court Championships in Atlanta this September.
“I think traveling to these tournaments and playing in them will become part of our life now, and we couldn’t be happier,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a commitment. You have to travel to all of these tournaments, and some people just don’t like to lose and don’t want to put themselves out there, and that is tough, but I think if you go at it with the never-going-to-play-again perspective, the losing kind of rolls of your back. After we played in Charlotte, I cried when I got back to our hotel room because not only did we play, but we played competitively and had a lot of fun doing it.”
