​LEXINGTON – You’ve heard of speed dating? Welcome to speed tennis.The one-night mixed doubles round robin is always one of the highlights of the News Journal Tennis Tournament and, because of the format, the competitors are always up against the clock.Especially if you’re playing Hayliegh Tucker and Dylan Catanese.Their success as a tandem Friday night at Lakewood Racquet Club should have been measured by a stopwatch.To reach the Final Four in mixed, the 10 doubles teams set out to win as many games as possible in five 20-minute rounds. In the second round alone, Tucker and Catanese won 10 games. They were no-ad games, but, still, you have to be in a serious zone to win at that pace. Once they reached the semis, Tucker and Catanese were still playing like their hair was on fire. With the final two rounds switching to a mini-set – first to win four games – they took out the husband and wife team of Liz and Brennan Skulski 4-1 before blanking distant cousins Hannah and Cooper Remy 4-0 for the title.“We were going by coach’s rules … I’m the coach, by the way, (so Dylan had no say),” Tucker joked. “If you’re winning, play fast. If you’re losing, play slowly. We were winning, so it was go, go, go.”It was the second straight mixed crown for Tucker. Last year, she won with Lakewood manager Jansen Webster. They are co-coaches of the Lexington High School girls team.“Jansen was out, so Dylan had to step up,” Tucker said. “I had to find the next best.”The next best? Is that any way to talk about your next door neighbor?“It felt less serious playing with Dylan,” Tucker said. “We just laughed the whole time. With Jansen, we’re the high school coaches so we felt like we had to win.”The win gave Catanese a career Grand Slam in the News Journal. He is the reigning champ in men’s singles and doubles and also owns titles in pickleball, but he is sitting out the rest of the tournament after dislocating the pinkie finger on his right hand playing backyard football on the Fourth of July.“I hadn’t played a lot of tennis this summer (because of the injury), but my serve was really good tonight and we just kept knocking off games,” said Catanese, who in 2024 won an OHSAA state doubles title with Ethan Remy for Lexington. “I’ve just been trying to get my grip strength back as much as I can.”Catanese will be a sophomore at Ohio Northern, where his teammates will be the Remy brothers, Ethan and Cooper. Ethan transferred in from Tiffin and Cooper, who played No. 1 for Lexington this past spring, will be a freshman.It was on another college campus, Wooster, where Catanese and Tucker worked a tennis camp together in June and decided they would make a pretty good doubles team.“We played some of the counselors there,” Tucker said, “and whooped them.”Brennan Skulski, a local orthodontist and another former Lex player, got a much too close look at how good Tucker and Catanese were together.“I couldn’t beli