I finally played a match in Turkey today. That was fun! My match was scheduled at 11:30 but I warmed up at 7:30 with Vicki Buholz again. She was to play Barbora Koutna from Czech Rep while I played Penny Smith from New Zealand. We hit for an hour and after breakfast I biked down to the beach as I was supposed to hit with Susan there but the courts were all full with a clinic. Susan, Pat and Tina hit mini tennis on one of the kids’ courts and I stretched. I was match #129, scheduled for 11:30 and got on about noon. We played on court B17 which is equivalent to court 57 (out of 60), about a quarter mile away from the tournament desk! Shelly Works from USA played next to me and Diane Barker a couple of courts down.

It was dark and overcast and rain seemed eminent but never materialized. Penny has nice strokes, especially her backhand slice and I think would be a very good doubles player, but my dropshots on the clay worked well against her and I managed to win 61 60. Tomorrow I play Helen Webb from Australia who is a very good player and very fit. After singles, I went to see my doubles partner, Pat Purcell play. She played Ros Balodis second round and played her very tough in the second set, losing 62 64. It was just a few points difference between the two and bad luck that she had to play her so early in the tournament. After lunch we scouted our potential opponents, either a So African team or a Dutch team.

I’ll include some photos tomorrow…I forgot about them today. I play singles early tomorrow, 9am…as do Susan and Diane in the 55s. Shelly lost in the 45s today and Vicki lost in the 50s, and Carolina Blouin in the 40s, so the 55s have to carry the USA banner along with Patricia Zerdan in the 35s.