I played the final today against another American, Veronica Lima De Angelis. She plays a lot of tournaments in Europe, so many that I thought she lived in Europe! But I asked her and she lives in New England, near Concord, and teaches English as a second language, so she has summers free. Her husband is Italian so they come back in the summers. She hits with 2 hands and slices a lot because she tore tendons in her wrist and had surgery on three of them, and also rotator cuff surgery. I played very well the first set when the balls were still light (even though it was raining when we started playing). In the second set we had a few long games, and she made some adjustments (fewer lobs since I was smashing well), but I won 60 61. About 7-8 games in the balls start getting heavier and deader on red clay and I lost the 9th game in every match this week! There wasn’t much in the way of prizes this week…a plastic medal and a bottle of prosseco which I learned is a kind of sparkling wine (I thought it sounded like a liqueur actually). I gave it to a friend from Germany who drove here, Ellen Neumann.

Other results, W75 ,Sophia Garaguly edged Heide Orth 74 75, Nora Blom won 60 60 and Carol Campling and Michelle Bichon play in the 70s final.

All results are here: http://www.itftennis.com/seniors/tournaments/tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100038774

After my match, I went for bike ride to Velden. Lake Worth is long and fairly skinny. Poertschach is in the middle and Velden at the eastern end. There’s a bike trail the entire way so it was a safe and easy ride. I walked around Velden, a bigger town than Poertschach, with more ice cream shops than people almost, and lots of lake front resorts. It was a nice end to the week.

And that’s a wrap on Europe Part 1. Part 2 takes place in July. I’m off to Vienna early tomorrow and hope to get some nice photos, do a bit of shopping and see the Lippenzauer horses perform.

Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/yBn489Bww8kg1f8u8