Today was a beautiful, warm and not too windy day in Ashburton and all the USA teams here won 3/0.
My team, the Maureen Connolly Cup , played Netherlands. I was anticipating a tough match with their #1 player, Annelies Van der Zweep-Prins, but she did not play singles. I played their #2 player, who heads Seniors Tennis in Netherlands, Thea Rietveld-Esser, and won 60 60. Tina started off play with an immaculate match against Sylvia Lievers-Kronenburg, winning 60 60. Sherri and Mary played a terrific and highly entertaining match ( I didn’t know Sherri could reach so high!) against Thea and Annelies, winning 63 61.
After we finished, and during the 30 minute break between singles and doubles, I watched and took photos of other players, particularly the USA women’s 50 doubles and USA men’s 55 singles and doubles. We won both matches 3/0.
After the matches were done, I helped one of the Dutch 50s players install Skype (tech support for friends), talked to my dad on Skype back in California; and of course Susan, Sherri and I went to our hangout, the New World Grocery store! The nice thing about playing in such a small town is the interest people have in this event. In the supermarket, several people stopped and asked us about this event (Sherri and Susan had on USA shirts). We ran into another person who was volunteering at the event. A big color photo of the opening ceremony was on the front page of the Ashburton Guardian today. People here are unbelievably friendly.
We had a great evening…I cooked for some of the players (pasta and chicken of course) and the door was open so players from various teams came in and out. It was fun to catch up with Jenny Cerff from So Africa.
The big news is that Kathy Vick from the 50s team is wearing a skirt tomorrow and Mary Ginnard is wearing one later in the week. Photos will be taken.
It’s raining now, but the plan is that we take on Turkey in our last round robin match starting with an 8:45 am warm up. Wednesday we will have an off day.
Footnote: All US teams won today. For details click here.
