The SoCal 55s team: Carolyn Nichols, Rancho Santa Fe, Robin Harris, San Diego, Chris Ramsower Pearlstein, Rancho Mirage, Mary Firek, Redlands, Ruth Young, El Cajon,  Jackie Heston, Garden Grove & Kathy Bennett, Irvine is seeded #1. Florida, playing at home, is a tough #2. We are playing in Boca Raton on green clay.

Monday we practiced since we had a day off, and scouted our opponents, New England vs Eastern. New England easily advanced to play us today, but we snuffed out their hopes behind strong singles performances by Nichols, Harris and Pearlstein. Robin was playing Vicky McEvoy, whom she knew 30 years ago…in fact, they spent so much time chatting at the net that the referee thought they were having a problem (score, line calls, the usual)…their only problem was being too social and friendly!

New England showed strong doubles play, and won at #1 doubles over Heston/Bennett, but Firek/Young fought back after losing the first set to win at #2 doubles. Socal 4, New England 1.

Tomorrow we play Mid Atlantic, who upset #4 seeded Southern 3/2. Southern won at #1 singles behind Wendy McColsky (beating Peg Machoian 60 60) and MATA took #2 and #3 singles, with Rita Giles and Terry Solins posting wins. Southern easily won at #1 doubles (Cindy Babb/McColsky won over Machoian/Joan O) but Solins/Simmy Pell took the #2 doubles point over Jan Kirkland-Cochran/Becky Holland.

NorCal and Florida play tomorrow in the 55s.

It was a long day..8am matches, then Robin and I decided to take a break and returned to Fort Lauderdale for an hour or so. We left to go support the doubles players but a block away I remembered that I forgot my cell phone…I turned around, got it, and then tried to back out of the parking lot…but my car wasn’t going anywhere, forwards or backwards. After a futile series of calls to AAA (my cell phone kept routing the calls to California, since I have a California area code), a tow truck showed up. But it couldn’t tow the car because of course the car couldn’t be shifted to neutral! So in the end I rented a car and we returned to Boca in time to catch the third sets of each match (fortunately it had rained so we did catch some of each match). (And now the “engine” light is on in the new rental car, a problem for another day).

The #2 seeded 65s SoCal team struggled to a win over New England, winning 3/2.

The 80s lost 2/1 to Florida, winning the doubles point.

That is all for now, but I will try to post more tomorrow. The 35s and 45s start arriving tomorrow since the play begins on Thursday in the 35s and 45s.