Quarterfinal Success in Mallorca as the Sun Shines

Draws are here.

There was one little spot of rain on the radar, right on top of Font de sa Cala around 6am…but that early morning shower gave way to a beautiful sunny Mallorcan day, full of lots of good tennis.

I played Pat Wire from Gr. Britain at 9am. Most of the practice courts were too wet to hit on before matches started, but luckily Sabine had booked the second hit on Court 1 which was the first to be playable. So we had a good 20 minute warm up. Pat was tough, the score belies the quality of our match, and in fact our match which I won 1,0 was only 10 minutes shorter than the one between Sabine and Katrin Dippner which was won 63 76 (5) by Dippner! We had a lot of multiple deuce games and many long points.

I play Carmen Chillida-Belzunce (Spain), the #4 seed, in the semis. We played already this year in the final of the Barcelona ITF 700. Carmen had a knock down drag out match against Marie Galey of France, and finally won it 57 61 76 (3) after nearly four hours of competition! I didn’t see the match (I didn’t realize it was still ongoing when I finished), but it had to be a good one.

I did watch much of the match between Paul French (GBR) and Frits Raijmakers (NED)in the men’s 65s. Paul (the husband of Chris French who I played last week first round) is a fit lefty and maneuvered Frits around the court well and made some amazing passing shots…and both hit great backhand overhead angles for winners. Paul prevailed over his doubles partner, but later in the day, Frits and Paul won their doubles handily.

Later in the afternoon Sabine and I played doubles against a German pair, Gu/Li, who were much tougher than the score indicated…we had a lot of great rallies with Gu scrambling all over the court to hit forehands and Li making some good moves at the net and baseline, but we were steadier (and Sabine hit some more good volleys and overheads). We play a Belgian/British duo, Deryckere/Chin tomorrow which will be a good one.