I am in New Orleans, Louisiana (aka NOLA) for a US International Club match called the Presidents’ Cup, between USA and France. This is a pretty tough competition since France brought their top 65/70 players in my division anyway!
For more information about the USIC (an invitational organization), click here.
The USIC was begun to promote international goodwill by friendship across the net. The first IC was begun 99 years ago today (the British IC) to “foster friendship, pure and uncommercialized”. There are many IC competitions, or varying levels during the year. Read more about the history of the IC here.
The actual tennis part of the competition is played on Tuesday/Wednesday with practice tomorrow from 1-4 pm.
I arrived yesterday since flights today were tough to obtain, it being Thanksgiving weekend in the USA. So this morning I walked around the Garden District, which has many tree lined streets (lots of big Oak trees…beautiful to see, though their roots have destroyed most of the sidewalks in the area!), Magazine Street lined with quaint shops and restaurants and historic houses from the early to mid 1800s.
After my walk (there was also an organized tour of the area), and lunch I drove myself and several of the French players to the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club where the match will take place. I hadn’t been there before (photos tomorrow), but it is the oldest tennis club in the USA, dating to 1876 (read more here). It has about a dozen clay courts, a clubhouse and nice lockerooms and a small pro shop. The courts are laid out in two banks, one of eight and one of four and they are pretty close together. There are benches only on the end courts (one way to assure continuous play I suppose!). To sign up for a court they have an old fashioned system where you sign your name in a book with your start and finish times (60 minutes for 1-3 players, 90 for doubles), and signing up in the same book on a waitlist if all court are full. We arrived around 3pm and just beat the rush, getting in an hour of hitting before getting bumped. We tried to get another court but by then it would have been dark, so just returned to the hotel.
Tomorrow we go to the World War II Museum here, practice, and have the opening ceremonies and dinner at the club. Erika Smith is our captain, and Bruce Lipka…they do a great job.
