Draws are here.

Thursday I played the singles final against Jutta Labenski, the second seed. She was I think a bit nervous, and I won comfortably. We played on the main court and every time she won a point her friends clapped very strongly, motivating me to not let them cheer too often! We had a chair, one of the local junior players I think (she still had metal braces), and the umpire did an excellent job, accurately calling all the lines and calling the score in English.

Our doubles was scheduled for 6pm, but our opponents were no-shows, so we stayed around to scout out our potential final round opponents. The #2 seeds, Heike Heimentz/Dr. LiLi and Olga Markova/Labenski were the other semifinal. Markova is a good doubles player (we’ve won this tournament in the past), but has a very bad knee, and couldn’t move, so they retired when down 4-1. Heimentz/Li were willing to play immediately (it was 7pm) so after a short consultation, Margreth and I decided to play. Maggie hadn’t hit at all yesterday, but played excellent doubles and we won 62 62, but we had some crazy points and won a couple of games fro 15-40 and 0-40 down to win the final two games of the first set. Red clay doubles is different for sure.

The tournament in Bad Breisig was very nice. The singles winners and finalists received prize money, in doubles the winners received bottles of wine and everyone received flowers. The courts were watered/swept/watered again by volunteers after every match, and the club members and volunteers were super nice. The club has a good restaurant, locker rooms and there was a physiotherapist/massage person on site at all times.

And that’s the end of the tournaments in Europe on this trip. I’m going to hit a bit this morning then go touristing before going back to the States soon.