Today I played the last round robin match of my group, at 10 am. I won my first two matches and my opponent, Fritelli, lost to Friedl in three sets on Wednesday. Since I beat Friedl yesterday 62 62, I think I only needed to win some games or maybe a set to win the tournament. Fritelli is from Brazil and plays a lot of tournaments. She doesn’t speak much English, at any rate I never heard her speak any but she was speaking a lot to her friends on the sideline on every changeover. Apparently, along with the footfault rules, the no coaching rule isn’t enforced in ITF events. The court we played on was pretty good, not too many bad bounces and I won 62 61. Fortunately I called the score out before each point, in Spanish, because she lost track of the score (in her favor) in most games for the first 3/4 of the match. However, the match was without controversy.
Last night we played mixed under the lights and finished at 10pm, so it was a quick turnaround, especially since I warmed up Heide Orth at 7:30am! We started just after 8pm, no-Ad scoring with a match TB if we split sets. We started slowly…actually I did, it was hard to see especially at the beginning, at twilight. Paul played well and really won the match and our opponents, Marc from Canada and Shirley from Santiago, were en fuego to begin with. They are a pickup team but gelled quickly. We ended up winning 36 63 10-6. Marc did a good job reflexing Paul’s overheads, but Paul did a better job finishing the points.
Heide beat Nanda Fischer (who was playing down) in the 70s final, an all-German final.
In the men’s 75, in an All-American final, Nick Ourusoff beat William Poist to claim the title; Poist is going for the doubles win though later today.
John Powless won the 80s as usual.
Marc Pepin acquitted himself well in his first Grade 1 final, winning a couple of games against a tough player, Roberto Ossandon from Chile (who took out Carlos Behar in the semis).
Denis Dumas from Canada goes for the men’s 50 doubles title later today and Paul Smith and I play the mixed final around 5:30, hopefully not later so we (I) can see the ball!
While I was waiting for the mixed match last night, I watched a men’s 35s match which was pretty good between Mauro Barman (who as it turns out is #2 in the world in men’s 35s) and Daniel Guerrero from Ecuador. Barman is pretty small, maybe 5’4” but hits a heavy ball. Guerrero is taller and has an extreme Western forehand grip…a Hawaiian grip. They handled the bad bounces well under the lights.
