Today was semifinal day in Bad Breisig. I warmed up early again with Heidi, at 8am then chilled for a while as I didn’t have to play again till 1:30…or so I thought, that was the time on the board and I double checked it before I left.

I had an early lunch and went back to the courts around 12:30. Court 1 was just finishing up and we were called at 12:50 to the court…fortunately I was ready to play early. I played Brigitte Friedl from Germany, a nice player and nice woman. We’d played once before a few years ago and I won but recalled it wasn’t so easy. She had some big shots. I started well and was up 5/0 in each set before losing some games; I won 62 61 and even (successfully) served and volleyed a couple of times! I then caught the last few points of the other semifinal between Nora Blom and a Czech player Jana Sedlakova. Nora had just beaten her handily in the European Closed championships in Sofia, Bulgaria and did so again 61 63. So for the 2nd time in a week I play Nora Blom in the final. It will be different here, as there’s no altitude so it will be harder to get the ball high on her, but it will be a good match. I also think we play doubles in the afternoon at another site in Remargen.

Update: In the evening there was a dinner for the players, one of two or three here (busy social program). There were some speeches, thanking the club and sponsors (I assume…it was all in German and I understood about every 10th word). Anyway, the tournament director picked two of the foreign players here for an interview, Stephen Dance from Tasmania (here playing Vets tournaments for the first time) and me. They wanted to know how this tournament compares to other ITF events and to events in the USA. These definitely are more social, the players stay around the club and watch, and all have men and women playing at the same time.