The nicest thing about this tournament
is that we have had no problem finding practice courts. The
tournament arranged for the players to have use of the courts at
Hotel Opatija, about a 10 min walk from the club. The other nice
thing is the great location on the Adriatic, with wonderful, sunny
weather.
The organization is the worst of any
tournament I have played. We spoke with one guy from Israel who came
to Croatia just to play the tournament. The club’s web page had
only information from 2008 on the home page…no dates or entry or
information on the 2009 tournament was posted. The 2008 dates were
the 24-29 of August, which this year would be a Mon-Sat…reasonable
to expect those to be the 2009 dates. This gentleman called the club
many times and emailed he said about a half dozen times, trying to
clarify the dates so he could fly here….never received a response
as to the tournament’s starting date, so he arranged his flights to
arrive on the 23rd…only to be told that the tournament
started on the 22nd and he was not entered…after flying
from Israel to Slovenia via Istanbul and renting a car to come here!
He is ending up playing doubles, mixed and consolation singles…
There’s no tournament desk to check
in…today I was told to go to court 2 to play my match, we warmed
up, were almost done when it turned out I was warming up with the
wrong person! I was warming up with Bridget’s opponent and my
opponent was waiting on court 4. I won 60 60 against a Slovenian
player and Bridget lost 63 63 to a Croatian player. I haven’t
figured out who the TD is…there seems to be a referee, who is also
running the tournament, let’s just say he’s not a people person.
I’m going to play mixed with an
American guy who is from NM, Barker, probably tomorrow; we are in the
round of 32, so hopefully there will be 2 matches tomorrow.
Tonight there is the Gala Dinner at the
Ambassador Hotel, which should be nice, I hope.
Despite the running of the tournament
it’s very nice here, the location makes it nice, the promenade
along the sea is great, weather is great, and the food around here
has been good, lots of Italian and seafood restaurants and tons of
ice cream shops.