Friday I flew from Mallorca to Frankfurt…then waited and waited…it took 90 minutes from touchdown to getting my lugggage…30 minutes to be bussed to the terminal and 60 minutes to get my luggage (thanks Condor).

Iris and Peter were waiting to pick me up with Reinhilde Adams, one of my teammates for the ETUF Essen team. The weather was nice, and we arrived around 5pm to Dossenheim, near Heidelberg where the playoffs were to take place.

We played at the the Heidelberger Tennisclub, where Steffi Graf played as a girl. It has 10 clay and 3 indoor hard courts (in the winter, three of the clay courts are covered as well). It’s a nice club with a big terrace overlooking seven of the clay courts, a good restaurant and locker rooms.

On Friday we went to the opening cocktail party at the club then to the home of a friend of the captain (Sabine Schmidt), Suzanne and her husband. Their home is on the fourth floor of an apartment building with a terrace which overlooks the Neckar River. The ruins of the Heidelberg Castle (at 16th century castle) could be viewed from the terrace as well. It was a lovely evening.

We played our first match on Saturday. There were four teams, the winners of the 60+ divisions in the first league of Bavaria, Berlin, the Essen area (our team) and the Heidelberg area (the hosts), from teh Heidlelberger club.

The draw was done Saturday morning without seeds, and we ended up playing what was probably the second strongest team on Saturday, Berlin. I played Katrin Dippner, who has played #1 on the German Cup team many times, and won 62, 61, but it was a bit closer than that…Katrin made some errors on big points. One thing interesting about European masters tennis is that footfaults are not really punished…I have seen some matches where the server was a yard or more into the court when hitting the ball, right in front of the referee, who did not react at all. The rule seems to be if the player starts with her/his foot behind or on the line…no footfault. If there’s a chair there are sometimes footfaults called…but it’s rare.

Our #2, Carole DeBruin of Netherlands and #4, Reinhilde Adams of Germany also won; we lost at #3 singles so had to play doubles. Carole and I played together for the first time and we played well, and won handily. We only needed to win one set to advance. We learned after the match that the #2 doubles, Louisa (Nini) and Desiree had won the match before it started, since the captain had nominated the wrong players. But Nini and Desiree won anyway and we advanced 5-1 to play Bavaria, which beat the hosts 4/0 (though two of the singles were won in match tiebreaks). The doubles wasn’t played.

Last night was the player dinner at the club which was very nice, though it was a bit warm inside..no fans or AC and the weather had been in the 80s that day. The hosts really did a great job. After tennis and before dinner Carole and I took a ride through the city and got a closer view of the castle. It was super busy in the old town, which was quaint and the buildings were ornate and lovely.

Today we played all four matches simultaneously, since the weather forecast (which was correct) called for rain in the morning and started at 9:30. I played the same person I’d played last year from Bavaria, Ursula, and won 0, 1 (lost the 5/0 game), Carole and Nini won at 2 and 3, and Reinhilde made a good comeback, rallying from match point down in the second set to win it 75 and then won the match tiebreak to complete the 4/0 win. Berlin beat the hosts 4/0.

After a break for players to shower etc, we had an awards ceremony and were given the trophy which Sabine had brought with her from ETUF, since we’d won also last year. The club also gave us nice bottles of wine which had labels they specially prepared. It was a nice touch.

Many thanks to Peter and Iris for their support and for the ride to and from the Frankfurt airport, to ETUF Essen, to Sabine for being a great captain (she supported us all weekend despite not being able to play, having a knee injury), and to my teammates…Carole, Karien, Nini, Reinhilde, Dagi, Desi, Dagy…great group.