(A Brooklyn tennis pro and sportswriter, narrowly missed playing in the main draw of the US Open by one win.and 38 years.)

In the summer of 2006 Chura and his partner, Jose Alvarado, entered the 80th Annual National Public Parks Tennis Championships (NPPTC) founded by Dwight Davis--father of the Cup--held at the USTA Billy Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. After battling through heat, night matches, and a thick field of competitors, the pair eventually made it to the finals of the Men's Open Doubles event.

Up until 1968, winners of the Open divisions of the NPPTC gained automatic entry into the U.S. National Championships (US Open). To this day Chura laments he and Alvarado would have come one win closer should the weather have been better. Ultimately, the final matches of the tournament were played at an indoor tennis facility in Greenwich, CT, due to an intense rain storm that weekend. It was, after all, the era before the new cutting-edge structure in Corona Park.

"If we were on Louie Armstrong," says Chura of the two journeymen from Ohio who expunged he and his partner that ill-fated afternoon, "Who knows? I could have been there holding that trophy."