I hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day, thanks to all the men and women who have fought for our freedom and served the USA since the 1700s, including my dad and his four brothers.

I played in a USTA “Super Cat II” tournament at the beautiful Westwood Country Club in Austin, TX. Frank Kelly is the terrific tournament director (Mr. Cool under pressure for sure) and Larry Eichenbaum is the experienced referee, getting the scores up on the web nearly instantaneously all weekend.

The 35-60 are played on hard courts and the 65 and over are all on clay. As usual it rained some, but fortunately for the tournament most of the rain happened at night, though there was a long delay on Friday.

I played 60 singles & doubles and 55 mixed and won the singles/doubles (with Hilary Marold, who paused in her pickleball exploits to play actual tennis for the weekend) and we lost in the semis of the mixed. The mixed all started and finished pretty late; on Friday about 10 and Saturday at 9. Since I had a party to go to at Jenny Klitch’s brother Tim’s house on Sunday night, it wasn’t all bad news that we lost on Saturday, but we had our chances. Mixed is really different from men’s or women’s doubles and the team we lost to is an experienced husband/wife mixed pairing while Dave Luedeke (a friend of Tim’s) and I are traditional doubles players. But it was fun and I got good matches.

Jenny Klitch is healthy again and tore up the 50 singles, beating Anna Zimmermann 61 62 and Shelly Works 60 63, though both scores weren’t indicative of the points that were played. Shelly and Anna won the 50 doubles and Jenny and Tim were contesting the 45 mixed today after Tim played Peter Markes in the 55 men’s singles final. Peter is shown below  with Tony Dawson (recovering from a shoulder operation).

Shelly’s husband Scott had a tough loss in the semis of his singles, losing 75 in the third in over three hours…and it was HOT! Scott has a very smooth classic game, fun to watch.

Susan Dawson/Teal Lang won the 55 doubles. Athena Cajas won the 55 singles over Teal, avenging some recent losses to Teal.

Barbara Hubbard and Janet Watanabe played 65 singles and doubles on the clay; both Barbara and Hilary lost to Ann Eaton, who was taking on Janet in the final.

Kathy Langer won the 75 singles but had to go 3 sets with Kathie Meyering to secure the round robin win.

Phil Landauer was back playing his first singles after losing a year to a knee replacement. Myke Loomis Landauer was also back playing a tournament for the first time in a while but pulled a hip muscle in their late first round match (they finished about 11pm)! It was great to see them both. Myke was holding Phil’s doubles trophy (he and Tony Dawson won the 65 doubles) so I took her “trophy wife” photo. She looks pretty happy for Phil! Singles update: Dave Sivertson won the 65 singles over Phil 62 61. All in all a successful comeback.

Jerry Thomas was there, and I caught him mid-bite eating his sweet potato fries!

Jimmy Parker was also playing his first singles after a knee replacement though he’s played some doubles already with his new knee. He beat Julie’s dad Paul Cass to win the 70 singles.

Ross Persons was tuning up for the 60 World Championships in Finland while Alex Behar and Val Wilder, normally here, were resting up for the Cups which start June 19th.

Patty Fendick McCain was playing her first tournament in 15 years, the mother/daughter. She can still play and so can her daughter…they beat the top 2 seeds with the loss of only 3 games!

The 35 women’s singles and doubles were almost reprisals of the 35 Clay singles and doubles. Julie Thu teamed with Kaysie Smashey to beat Nancy Hilliard and Amy McCambell in the doubles final; that was the exact matchup from the 35 Clay. Smashey passed on singles (recovering from flu) but Hilliard and Thu were playing the singles final today. Update: Thu won 64 75 over Hilliard

Julie Cass won the 45 singles and doubles (with Beverly Bowes). That’s not a surprise!

All the results including those from Monday can be found here: http://tennislink.usta.com/tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=172718

Meanwhile on the West Coast the Pacific Coast Cat II was going on. The results can be found here: http://tennislink.usta.com/tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=171599

The 60s had a particularly strong draw. My sister, Eileen Christin, beat Chieko Holt first round before dropping a tough 3-setter to Andrea Barnes 64 in the third. Andrea in turn fell 75 in the third to Leslie Airola Murveit Leslie and Andrea beat Eileen and Bonnie Tetrick 63 76 to win the 60 doubles.