Another Day in Paradise: Wednesday at the La Jolla 40s

The only negative to such sunny days is that it’s hard to see in the afternoon! However, I played singles in the morning and got on a bit late but not much. I played last year’s champion Dina McBride. I tried to talk her into giving me a game for every year she is younger than me, but she didn’t fall for that idea! She won her first round match 60 60 against a very good player, this year’s 45 Grass finalist, so I was expecting to be done before noon. My goal was to get four balls back per point. I didn’t always achieve that but I did get a few back and won four games. In fact, there was only one break in the first set. Dina made some good adjustments in the second set and won the last 6 games of the match. Since we didn’t finish till after 1pm it was a moral victory for me. For Dina it was an actual victory and she plays Fanny Gamble the semis. Fanny upset the #4 seed, Mercedes Michel, 26 76 62. I warmed up with Fanny, so she obviously warmed me up better than I warmed her up. Jennifer Dawson won 61 61 in under an hour. Amy Frazier won 1/0 retired, injury. The first game lasted 16 points and the few points I saw were excellent, Hiromi is very fast. However, Hiromi got injured one point into the second game and ended up at the hospital, with an apparent back injury. I was playing at the time so didn’t see what happened.

In women’s doubles, the seeded teams all reached the semis, and none dropped a set. Michel/Phillips won 64 64; the top 3 seeds only dropped 3 games between them! Jennifer Dawson/Jenny Rens destroyed the team we lost to yesterday, losing only one game!

In men’s singles, most of the seeds won; NorCal’s Shibu Lai is the only unseeded player left; he beat #5 seeded Kerry Safdie when Safdie had to retire at 5-5 in the third (ill); Jesse Ponwith upset #5 seeded Elson De Cantuaria when he had to retire (injury) at 31 in the third.

Marcio Carlsson from Brazil, the 4th seed, has yet to drop a game in singles. He’s shown below (tall player on the left) with the other four Brazilian players here.