Draws are here.

Today we were lucky and were able to play outdoors. I don’t think it was particularly warmer than yesterday but there was no rain, just wind and pretty cool weather. Toni Novack said that her weather app showed the “feels like” temperature was in the low 30s at 9am. We got pretty lucky with the weather actually.

Karien Theeuwes, my doubles partner, warmed me up today. The only other person who was warming up at all was my opponent Sylvia Primault (my last three matches were against at Sylvia, another Sylvia and a Sylvie, from Netherlands, Austria and France respectively..what are the odds).

It was pretty windy and pretty cool, though I did play in a tennis skirt and long sleeved shirt, no tights, but a down vest at times was useful. I won the first two games, then lost the set 63. The second set was close…at 5-4 I was down 40-0 and finally my game and forehand arrived in Austria and I won the set 6-4 (despite her having staved off a set point with a dead net cord). After a short break I won the third set 61 as Sylvie appeared to me to be a bit injured (she told me when I asked she’d tweaked her Achilles) but she ran and got a decent drop shot on match point, though I won the point. The match lasted about 2.5 hours.

After about a 45 minute break we played the doubles final (our semifinal opponents having defaulted with an illness) against the team that beat us in the final last year, Inge and Hildegarde. We turned the tables this year, winning 60 36 (10-3). All the points lost in the match tiebreak were errors by me…Karien played a perfect tiebreak.

The only other American winners were Bruce Barrett and Jan Kofol, who won the 75 men’s doubles final by default. Bruce won the mixed too as he was lucky to play with Shirley Fox of Great Britain, a terrific doubles player (she also won the W75 doubles with Kerry Ballard from Australia).

Toni Novack lost in the women’s 75 singles, retiring due to an arm injury (it was really swollen, perhaps from playing on carpet yesterday). Gay Finch and Hanni Seitz of USA lost in the women’s 80s doubles final to a German pair. Below, a pre-match photo of Toni and Kerry Ballard this morning. Brrrrrr!

Many thanks to Helge and his wonderful crew, Gisela, Manfred, Harald et al for putting on a wonderful tournament despite the unseasonably cold weather. I had fun dining with the Brits Pauline and Shirley (aka whatshername) who both have a wicked sense of humor, and it was nice to catch up with some of the Friendship Cup ladies especially Kathy Langer.

Addendum: I wrote about Kathy’s 7 hour trip to Feld am See, which should have been a 90 minute drive. This is what happened:

• The car was a manual transmission with a tricky maneuver to put it into reverse involving pulling up a lever
• She lost her navigator, Ann Moore, when she missed her flight to Lublijana due to weather in Florida
• She didn’t have a USB-A adapter for her phone, only a USB-C one, so didn’t figure out car play
• Her navigation app was silent, so she missed the instructions when approaching a roundabout which would have told her which exit to take
• She missed a turn which resulted in rerouting her to a grass road and a dead end (I’ve been there)
• She didn’t have a charging brick for her phone, so her phone battery died
• She did get help at a grocery store from some nice people who found a spot to charge her phone and gave her some food (which she couldn’t pay for since her credit card didn’t work…Apple Pay works at nearly every grocery store here, fyi).
• She finally ended up in Klagenfurt (about an hour the opposite direction) and made it to Feld am See by 10pm…in one piece thank goodness!
• This sounds like the making of a family legend.

Here Kathy and I are below.