Draws are here

The women’s 60/70/80 National Clay Courts have a new location for the fourth time in the last five years and hopefully have found a more permanent home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida! Trish Faulkner is the Tournament Director and Bill McDermott and the staff at the Palm Beach Gardens Tennis Center will be onsite at all times running the desk; Bill also sends out very informative emails.

In the 60s the match of the day was a first round between Leslie Murveit and Ann Young. It was a high quality, physical match which Ann won 75 64. There were six seeds playing today with only Diane Barker and Susan Wright having byes, and all advanced. I played Hiko Fritz Krakow from Colorado (a terrific veterans’ skier) and won 61 60. It was supposed to rain starting around noon…it’s 2:30 now and so far the tournament has dodged the rain, which is clearly all around us (no sun in sight).

Both seeds in action in the 50s advanced; the 70s are still playing.

There are 18 courts here; 2 “stadium” sized courts and 16 others in two lines of 8 courts. All are underground watered courts and are quite good. It does tend to be very windy here though. Today was pretty calm, not too hot due to the cloud cover but very humid.

The day after the tournament the clubhouse is set to be demolished and rebuilt as a much bigger edifice, 2-stories with more lounge room, better lockers etc.

All for now…Susan and I play doubles tomorrow afternoon and both play singles in the morning.

Thanks @shopluckyinlove for the nice tennis outfit!