The USA Marble Cup team won its first round robin match at the ITF World Team championships today against Norway. Susan Wright won at #2 singles 62 60; Diane Barker followed at #1 singles and won 61 60. Pat Purcell and I finished the tie winning 61 60. We play all matches on the same court; today that was court 8.

We started today with warm up around 7:30 and finished just after noon. There must be a lot of churches around since at 11 and especially at noon the church bells started ringing. It was very nice to hear.

I signed the scorecard (four times!) and we returned the water bottles (the system is that each team has one token, good for 6 liters of water; fail to return any bottle and it costs a euro, about $1.15). We returned all bottles!

By the time we finished playing, the club was packed. We are playing at SSV Ulm and TK Ulm which are separate clubs but literally right next to each other…they use the same check in desk for the tournament even though there are two club houses. The men’s 50 play starting around 12:30 so those teams were arriving and most other 8:30 matches were playing #1 singles or doubles.

I watched a bit of the men’s 55 against Russia. Stu Saiki looked to be in trouble for a while then suddenly won 26 50 retired. Bill Moss picked up a win at #1 singles to clinch the tie. This red clay is a challenge to many of the players.

A couple of Americans came by to watch, Michael Hughes from the USTA and Joann the massage person who is there. Jack Barker watched too. It’s always nice to have some home country support.

We left around 1pm and had the idea of running some errands, going to the grocery store etc…then I remembered it was Sunday and everything (other than the churches, restaurants, and gas stations) is closed. So we went home and did laundry.

Pat was trying to work; I was trying to get my photos edited and do a bit of blogging; Susan was a bit at loose ends because there’s no WiFi here and she has no data and she was stuck with 2 introverts. (Robin, we need you here!). But we passed the time well enough, I cooked dinner and we are going to bed early because we decided to practice very early tomorrow since it may rain in the afternoon. We have the day off tomorrow as do all 6 of the American teams.

Draws are here:

Please click on the following links to view the Draws and Results:

2018 ITF Seniors Teams Fred Perry Cup (M50)

2018 ITF Seniors Teams Maria Esther Bueno Cup (W50)

2018 ITF Seniors Teams Austria Cup (M55)

2018 ITF Seniors Teams Maureen Connolly Cup (W55)

2018 ITF Seniors Von Cramm Cup (M60)

2018 ITF Seniors Alice Marble Cup (W60)

Draws for the individual world championships are here.