Saturday we had our first team match of the 2024 season. We played the TC Blau-Weiss Marsberg in Marsberg, Germany, about 1:45 hours north of Essen.

The club’s team was just promoted to the top level..each year two or three teams are promoted from the level below and two or three teams go down a level. We are playing in the 60+ division. Unlike USTA league teams players of all levels can play on any team…and if the team wins the national championships or goes to nationals it does not break up. This year there are only seven teams in this division for us since one team declined promotion (which means more travel).

The format is four singles and two doubles per tie and 2 sets plus a match tiebreak for singles and for doubles. #2 and #4 singles are played first (we started at 1pm) followed on the same courts by #1 and #3 singles.

The club was very hospitable, making one of the smallish locker rooms available exclusively to our team, putting out coffee, tea, bread, meat and cheese and homemade dips on the clubhouse dining table.

The #1 player for Marsberg, the coach/teaching pro at the club is Barbara Novak who won the German National Indoors in March of this year (and is a former pro). We were happy the rain was only an intermittent drizzle since none of us had indoor tennis shoes with us (smooth soled shoes are necessary when playing on carpet.) A lot of people came out to watch our match which was closer than the score (61 62) would indicate.. the match lasted nearly two hours (including warm up) and we had a lot of great points. It was a fun match. After a short break Sabine Schmitz (who played #2 and easily won her match against Bernadette Reite Poll) and I played doubles against our two singles opponents and again had a lot of fun points but won comfortably.

Dagmar Anwar (#4) and Rheinhilde Adams (#3) won their singles and doubles efficiently. against Annette Kleinschmidtt and Elisabeth Regal respectively.

After the tennis which ended around 5:30 pm (this was an all-day affair this week) we had a meal with our opponents who prepared various German salads (potato etc), sausage and chicken, and arrived back in Essen around 8:30 or so.