Draws and results are here.

The big news on Saturday was not the tennis, but the big rain/thunder storms that hit Barcelona and Catalonia, the region that includes Barcelona. I got a couple of alerts on my phone. The first of which made me jump out of my shoes almost it was so loud.

The storms were “caused by a weather phenomenon known in Spain as a “cold drop” or DANA (Isolated Depression at High Levels), in which a mass of cold air drops over the warmer waters of the Mediterranean Sea.” (Yahoo News)

One flight to the US out of Barcelona, had to return because of damage during the storm, and a couple of people are missing.

There had been a warning of storms all week for Saturday. I practice in the morning at 10:30 first with a couple of Italians, (Laura, 65s and Anna, who won 55s), then with Lisa Prechtel, and then again with Laura, and there were rumblings of thunder throughout the morning, but no rain.

My match was scheduled at 5 PM, and as I left my hotel, the weather looked ominous, especially since I just received those alerts.

I put my bag indoors because it looked like it could rain and then went to my Match court where there was a 330 match in progress. But it began to rain giant drops. There was a pause and play on all courts but one and I didn’t see any lightning. But then the heavens opened up and it poured for quite a while.

Eventually, an announcement was made that play would resume after 8 PM, although the club members thought the court will be ready much earlier than that. The court went from very wet to mostly dry to quite playable quickly. And the tournament made the decision to start all the singles matches immediately once the course became playable and to not chair them.

My opponent, Magda Gual Pascual and I started a little before 7 PM. It doesn’t get dark in Barcelona this time of year until 9:45 pm so we were able to finish before dark. We played on a court that went east/west Unfortunately the sun only came out for one game when I was on the sunny side because it was difficult.

I won the final, picked up my prize money and small trophy, thank the tournament director and a few other people, and returned to my hotel since I had to get up at 4 AM this morning.

I’m off now for USA via London… it’s been a long and fun trip, but I’m ready to go home!