I played Laura De Vitttori today, and won 63 64….took 7 set points in the first set (I was up 52 40-0 and 5-3 40-0…finally closed it out). She played better after 5-2, but I rallied from 0-3 and 3-4 0-40 myself in the second set to finish well and ran after an inordinate amount of drop shops…it was a fun battle.
I play Carole De Bruin of Netherlands next, the #4 seed, who is an excellent player. We practiced a couple of times this week, so no big surprises.
Bill Moss from the USA (Malibu, CA) is the #2 seed here and had a real battle today against a Spanish player (Eduard Osta Valenti) who was only seeded #16 despite having reached the final of the world championships in Umag last year (taking out Americans Stu Saiki and Mike Fedderly along the way), and in Portugal in 2019. Bill started playing around noon and was still playing when we finished around 2:30. He rallied from 2-0 down in the third to win it 64 and weathered his opponent’s medical time out (back injury I heard) at 4-5 just before he was to serve for the match. Bill’s son Daniel (a Pepperdine alum who played tennis there and is in the men’s 30 semis here) and a couple of Canadians, Terence and Stacey Robinson, seemed to be the only ones rooting for Bill, but then we are in Spain, and Daniel’s cheering was worth that of about 20 spectators. Bill plays Frits Raijmakers of Netherlands next.
