Today I finally played singles here at BallenIsles. I played a club member Debbie Peck and won to reach the final against Kathy Foulk, who won easily today.

Pam and I won our doubles too, against Debbie Hobbs and Dee from the Tampa area.

After our doubles, we scouted our potential opponents who had an amazing match. We watched Cindy LePrevost and Yvonne Gallop play Betsy Savitt and Kris McDonald. To say it was a topsy-turvy match is underestimating the momentum swings. Betsy and Kris were up 5-2 in the first set when Cindy and Yvonne made their move, winning five games on the trot to steal the first set 7-5. The second set was on serve till 3-2 when Betsy and Kris made a move and went up 5-2 and this time they finished off the set winning it 62. They rode that momentum into the tiebreak, taking a lead of 8-4. However, they heard the footsteps of a comeback…pretty soon it was 8-7. Betsy and Kris had two match points at 9-7 but didn’t close them out. After that it got pretty silly…both teams had multiple match points; there were amazing overheads and winners when down match point and double faults when holding match point. At one  point McDonald/Savitt seemed to have won the match 20-18, no, the match continued…and Cindy and Yvonne finally won the tiebreak 21-19 in the match tiebreak! The spectators were exhausted at the end. We thus play Gallop/LePrevost in the final.

The other match of the day was Shelly Works vs Fran Chandler. The two friends warmed each other up, then started play at 9am and just over three hours later Shelly won the match 7-5 in the third, playing smart tennis and wearing down Fran with her great neutralizing shots.

There are quite a few players here who are chasing year end #1 ITF rankings or ITF points, but the majority of the  players are looking for a fun tournament at a great site.

Taras Beyko from Canada sealed the men’s 45 top ranking with a win here. There are other players looking for top rankings too..more on that tomorrow.