Today, Friday in Baden-Baden was a nice day all around. I had my earliest match of the week, 11am. I hadn’t arranged practice last night, but saw my doubles partner at breakfast and we arranged a 10:30 hit. Then I went to the club early, to warm up my body and hit serves and ended up hitting with Frits from the Netherlands for 15 minutes (his warm up partner was late) and with Lieselot from the Netherlands for 15 minutes, and then with Barbora for 20 minutes, which was just right. The clay here is so slippery, all the Germans say it’s not normal German clay, but is harder and more slippery, making hitting shots on balance a challenge.

I played Margreth Beyer today and won 61 61. We had some good rallies but I was more consistent and ran down some good dropshots. She played well but missed the finishing shot a bit too often. I play Lyn Mortimer tomorrow…we played in the final last year and she’s playing well as always. She had a 3-setter against Sabine Schmitz, her doubles partner. Sabine played very well, much better than yesterday, volleyed well and hit her serve and backhand great. Lyn hit really good forehands, and served and returned well. Lyn steadied down for the third set after losing the second in a tiebreak and won it 61.

Barbora and I play Lyn and Sabine in the doubles final after we all play our singles finals tomorrow. Barbora plays Anthea Stewart in the final; Anthea beat the #2 seed, Liesl Prechtel today 63 64.

I watched some other matches; Pierre Godfroid played Glenn Busby, a complete contrast in styles, as Godfroid served and volleyed on every point and chipped and charged and Busby stayed back and hit lots of passing shots and won all the backcourt points. Busby won 62 76 (1).

Denis from Canada lost in the semis of the doubles. He played with Vincent, the local pro who is an excellent lefty; they split and lost the ensuing match tiebreak 10-1. They weren’t quite prepared to play a match tb instead of a third set I think. They played Frits and his partner who are very good.

All singles finals are a noon tomorrow, and doubles follows, except for a few finals which are scheduled for Sunday. The scheduling doesn’t occur here for the next day till after 8pm which is quite different from the US which schedules matches days in advance.

Photos below of Barbora and me and of Margaret and me.