Day 6 No Tea Party
Still basking in the joy of the night before and our exciting win against Romania, we knew we would have our hands full with a very good Great Britain Team. Great Britain also had a nail biter with Romania, however they lost 2-1. With a victory, we would finish our bracket undefeated and move into the semifinals. With a loss, we would be in a three way tie with Great Britain and Romania which would then be decided by various mathematical tie breakers. We were in control of our own destiny and had to win.
As had been common with Willie’s other matches to date, he found himself in long points and long games. Down 4-5 with the Brit serving, Willie broke back and held his own serve to take a 6-5 lead. The tenacious Brit looked a bit shaken at 30-30 but he came up with two good points and they were into a first set tiebreaker that unfortunately went to Great Britain. Slightly deflated, Willie went down an early break in the second set but surged back to even the score and had break chances at 4-4 and 5-5. In fact the Brit hit a ball that appeared to be out on break point at 5-5 (later verified by the roaming umpire to be out) but not clearly seeing the ball or the mark and showing the good sportsmanship of Team USA Willie called the ball good. Unfortunately the Brit played a great game at 5-6 and finished off the match. 7-6 (3), 7-5 Great Britain.
Carsten next took the court against Great Britain’s number 1 player. Having initially felt a little tired from 5 hours of play the night before (understandably!) he was moving well and feeling relatively good. Carsten gave it a valiant effort, especially given the time on court the night before. Unfortunately Great Britain’s player, who is a top seed in the individual tournament following the team event, had too many answers looking very comfortable on the clay court winning the match 6-3, 6-1.
Dan and I played the doubles match against Great Britain’s number one player and third player. We started off quickly and held on strong winning the match 6-3, 6-4.
We had lost the team match 2-1 and with Romania’s win over Ireland were now in a three way tie for our bracket. The first tie breaker is the number of individual matches won (singles and doubles)…we had each won 6 matches. Next is the percentage of sets won…we barely lost out to Great Britain (13 of 19) and Romania (14 of 22) as we had won 13 of 21. It was incredibly disappointing to be so close to the semifinals and playing for the Championship but to narrowly miss out. We have an off day tomorrow before we continue on Friday.
