Today, Saturday, was the last practice day before the team competition here in Turkey.
Our team practiced at 9:30 for a couple of hours. Susan, Anne and Carolyn didn’t set alarms which meant they had to hop out of bed, hightail it to breakfast and the courts. I had time for a short gym workout before we practiced.
Interestingly, we are using Wilson US Open Heavy Duty balls (hard court balls) here…regular duty balls are a rarity in Europe (I know, technically we are in Asia…). They get fluffy quickly. The courts are pretty soft, we played on the D Block, and the courts there seem slower than the ones we played on the previous two days. And there are some interesting bounces.
After practice and a bit of stretching, we had lunch, and I went to the captains’ meeting. Our draw format is…interesting. We have four groups, three of four teams and one of three teams. There are SEVEN seeds. We are the top seed, so we are in the group of three teams. Each of the top four seeds is in a different group of course and the next three seeds are randomly drawn into the groups containing the 3rd and 4th seeds, but not into the groups containing the second or first seeds. So the group with France (the 3rd seed) has three seeds (three, five and six, out of four teams), and the group with Germany (the fourth seed), has two seeds (four and seventh seeds), plus a tough Spanish team. It was confusing. There’s an explanation (not wanting to punish a seed by putting them in with the second seed).
Anyway, I got to catch up with some of my German teammates (two are captains of German teams and another of a Dutch team) and other people I haven’t seen for months, since Mallorca. And there are some interesting matches tomorrow, Germany vs Spain and France vs Italy.
We play host Turkey tomorrow and Portugal on Monday.
After the meeting I met up with the USA contingent to help with organizing players for photos of USA teams, and the opening ceremonies…each country was called up to the stage, photos taken and the next team walked up. The Ukrainian women garnered applause for being there.
Saturday night is black/white (clothing, and white tablecloths and black napkins, with loads of seafood on the menu…shrimp, fish, smoked and cooked salmon and more, even a chocolate fountain.
And that’s a wrap…early start tomorrow for warm up, 9:30 match time.