Father/Daughter, Mother/Son Hard Courts: Surviving the Heat!

The Father/Daughter (Open, 60,70 & 80+) & Mother/Son Hard Courts is taking place this weekend in Rancho Mirage, CA, near Palm Springs.

I drove over on Wednesday from San Diego where it was sunny, balmy (70s) sort of day…when I arrived in Palm Desert it was in the 90s at dusk. That’s California, if you don’t like the weather, drive East or North and it’ll change.

Dad and I had a good practice match on Thursday with Hirsch, who with wife Sheryl run this event, and Tad Yukawa, a long time friend who lives in the area. It was already in the 90s when I drove to the Springs Country Club at 8:30am…and well over 100 by the time we finished. But it’s a dry heat (and still super hot!). I did some running drills after with Tad and believe me, dry heat or not, it’s hard to breathe after a while.

It was a great warm up and today we won our first round, but have a much tougher match tomorrow against a team that won the Indoors in this division, father/daughter 80+ a couple of months ago, the HIcks. The 80+ means the dad has to turn 80 sometime in 2017. My dad is 92 (!). And competitive. It was over 100 again today too.

There are a lot of really good players in these events: Alissa Finerman who has won a lot of doubles gold and has been on winning cup teams, is playing the 80+; Dina McBride and her husband Desi are playing Mother/Son and Father/Daughter respectively; Kathy Settles is playing Mother/Son with Christian; Tim Sah who is going to Stanford and playing on the team there next year is playing Mother/Son too with Valerie Tan (and they play the Settles tomorrow). Julia Cohen, a former top 100 player is playing 60+and 70+ with Richard. Julia already has over 40 gold balls and is only 28! Semis are tomorrow in all divisions.

Tomorrow the weather changes a lot, with highs only in the 80s, and the wind will pick up a lot as well. By Sunday it will only hit 70.

Below is a photo of the courts and one of Sheryl and Hirsch.