Palm Beach Gardens, Florida 1/27/22
It was a long day today on court Thursday in Palm Beach Gardens. I warmed up with Susan Wright at 8am, played Erin Boynton at 10:30-1, and doubles at 3pm. The match with Erin was a good one and she played amazingly well especially considering that she was coming from a locked-down Toronto and hadn’t played outdoors for a long time and basically hadn’t competed a lot the past two years. I won 64 62 but the match was tighter than that. We both tried several different strategies throughout the match. Erin is 6 feet tall…the average height of my opponents this week thus far has been 5’11 1/2”! Tomorrow the average will come down a bit as I play Fran Chandler who though taller than I is not 3/4 foot taller!
In other 60s matches, Fran won 60 60; Vicki Buholz the #2 seed won 61 61 and Diane Barker retired up match point against Terri Thyssen (she couldn’t play tomorrow…family), but that match was a tussle…Terri won the first set 75, lost the second 64 and was down 53 in the third, match point. So Terri now goes on to play Buholz in an all-Texan semi.
In doubles, Susan and I beat Betsy Savitt and Sue Bushman 61 62 and we play Erin and Abbi Neuthaler in the final. They played an extremely close match against Ann Jacobs/Kris McDonald. Erin and Abbi won the first 76, lost the second 75 and won the match tiebreak 10-7 to win the two-hour plus match! There were lots of momentum changes, and good groundstroke and volley exchanges.
Susan won 60 60 in the 50 singles and plays Alice Stubbs in the final tomorrow. Alice also cruised to a win in her round robin group. In doubles Kristen Charlton/Sue Kaleel take on Kathy Zanon/Sandy Mills. Charlton/Kaleel already won the 40 doubles round robin.
Toni Novack and Sue Bramlette have reached the singles final of the 70s with the loss of only a few games. Sue is also in the doubles final with Cindy Babb…they cruised to the final in contrast to the #2 seeds, Machoian/Oelschlager who had another tussle today, this one with Rhodes/Dickenson, which they won 75 64…Machoian managed to hold serve at 4-4 in the second, which was the only hold in the set for either team (welcome to senior women’s tennis).
In the 80s, Dimond/Cheesman won the 2-team division and Frances Dickenson seems on track to win the three person round robin in the singles (with one more match to come).
In 40 singles, Christen Bartelt plays Maria Seideman in the final.
