I arrived yesterday in Karlovy Vary, after a four hour drive from Munich.

Czech Republic is very beautiful, this part anyway, heavily wooded, very green, lots of streams, and not very commercialized. The club is bisected by a stream, and has about 14 clay courts. It’s very fast clay, hard with less topping than other courts I have played on here. There’s some elevation, about 1600 feet or so, and the ball seems to fly here. This week we are using Head ATP balls. The player packet was pretty good here: a towell (not white!), a mug and Karlsbad wafers, a specialty of this area.

I’m in a round robin of five players, and there are two seeds, though I have no idea why, since my first match is against the #2 seed, who played a match today, and happens to be the only Czech player in the draw! So after playing what is essentially the final, I play three more matches, one tomorrow, and presumably one Thursday and one Friday. My opponent tomorrow is tricky, when she’s playing well, as she did last time we played, she’s challenging to play.

Ellen Neumann and I are also playing doubles, another round robin, but don’t play till Thursday.

The weather is iffy for tomorrow, and it just rained pretty hard, but hopefully will be ok tomorrow.

I warmed up Ellen, & Van Baarle today, both won, and hit with a player from Florida, Mirek today. It was a gorgeous day for tennis.

Draws here:http://www.itftennis.com/seniors/tournaments/tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100030524