Today, Wednesday, I got to play a lot of tennis, which was great. I warmed up at 8 am with Heidi Eisterlehner, and after she won in under an hour, Nora Blom and I played for the second time in a week. This time, with the heavier balls and conditions, Nora played a lot better. I won but in three sets 64 26 61. I lost the first two games but came back to win the first set; in the second, Nora started on fire and I won two  points in the first four games, but fought back; Nora finally won the set on   her fourth or fifth set point with a net cord dribbler. Nora started well in the third, going up 1/0 40-0 but I came back i that game and then eked out the rest of the set, as most games were close. We both had to make strategic changes during the match. We had a chair umpire for this match, a teenager from the club. We asked her to call the score in German and she agreed, then called it completely in German and there were no German players on the court (though Nora speaks several languages extremely well besides Dutch…English, German, French for sure). So now I cam pretty much keep score in German and understand it.

After a pretty brief break, Olga Markova with whom I am playing doubles this week, and I took the shuttle to the Remargen Club about 15 minutes away. It’s a nice club, not too dissimilar to the one in Bad Breisig with quite a few courts and a nice restaurant and bar upstairs. We warmed up and started our 3pm match against a German and Swiss player, Gabby Kuhn  and Karen Wolf, a bit early. We had a lot of long games especially in the beginning but won 60 61. I watched our potential opponents, Margreth Beyer and Jana Sedlakova play some…it will be a tough match tomorrow. Sedlakova is a very nice player, a former Fed Cup player from Czech Republic and Maggie is solid.

We play the final tomorrow at high noon. We were scheduled for 4:30 pm but the consensus was that we wanted to play earlier and we sent Maggie to ask since she’s local…and she got the time changed.

I’m staying now at the Klein & Fein hotel and asked the owner if there was a chance of using a washer…and she will do my laundry. So that’s one reason for the nice reviews for this hotel in Bad Breisig, because it’s not for the views (of the road) for for peace and quiet (road again…though with windows closed it is quiet.). But I’d stay her again if I come back.

German players seem to drink a lot more beer than American players…there’s a tap going everywhere here..sort of like the Westwood tournament in Austin. After our doubles Olga has a klein bier (small) and I had a magnum (ice cream bar). Cheers!

Draws: http://www.itftennis.com/seniors/tournaments/tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100033165