Hello again from Austin. It rained some yesterday but my opponent and I dried the court and finished our match about an hour late. We even played our doubles in daylight, finishing around 7, in time to go to the barbeque (and Texas barbeque is really good). But matches on Friday weren’t finished till 1:30 am…Frank Kelly, the TD was back early on Sat with only 3 hours sleep and Ben Ball came up from Corpus Christi Texas to input all the results and run the desk.
Today I played Sylvia Morris who beat the 4th seed first round, and won that match. Hilary Marold and I were supposed to play Mary Morgan and Teal Lang in the 50 doubles final, but Mary hurt her back, and had to pull out of singles and doubles so Teal and I played the singles final as well. There was about a 2 hour rain delay in the morning, but matches got on about 10am, and it was still dry at 4pm, though thunder was rumbling when I left at 4pm.
The match of the day for the women…of the tournament, was between Julie Cass, Austin and a pro at the Westwood CC where we played the event, and Nancy Hilliard from Corpus Christi, TX. These two played on the same high school team but Nancy is just returning to tournaments after a long break. She didn’t look like she’d missed a step though, she is a lefty and a very quick counterpuncher with a deadly passing shot. She beat Michelle King in the semis. She won the first set against Cass in the final before Cass rebounded in the 2nd, winning it 60. The third set was close all the way, with all the games being won on the south side till 4-4 when Julie finally held serving into the sun, and then broke to take the match. It was entertaining…Julie was attacking as much as possible and Nancy was countering and giving Julie very little pace to hit, while keeping the ball deep and throwing up great lobs or hitting terrific passes when Julie forced her way into net.
Another good match was Kathy Vick and Heidi Gerger. Kathy won 61 63, but it took 2 hours of grueling rallies for her to win, many points went over 50 hits according to one onlooker. Kathy’s experience and consistency were the difference in the end.
There were several good men’s matches too, in action were Ross Persons in the 50s, Jimmy Parker in the 60s, Anders Eriksson and Kline Sacks in the 35s and Kelly Ward in the 40s, a strong showing over all.
By the way, the 70 and over divisions here are played on CLAY, not on hard courts!