World Tennis Masters Team Championships, Türkiye: USA Teams Go 6/0 on Day 1

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It was a wild morning with winds gusting up over 25 mph and though it was clear it was chilly, and the conditions with the wind and the low sun angle made playing challenging. Our court, A4 was almost devoid of clay but not of debris from the pine and juniper trees behind the court. We had to spend quite a while dragging it off and picking up the pine needles. The first day is always a bit chaotic even though this event has been hosted here many times, since there are small differences each year.

Every player has towels, banana and water delivered to the court and there are a fair number of alert referees around to answer questions.

We, the Althea Gibson (W70) team beat Switzerland 3/0. Betsy Kuhle made her Cup singles debut against Zdenka Koch (formerly of Czechia) who is a good lefty (leave it short to her forehand or even backhand and watch out). Betsy played a good match, and competed really well, winning 63 64. I played Yvette deRoche and won 61 61. Andrea Barnes and Tina Karwasky won 62 61 but that did not tell the tale of the match since it took 1 hour 40 minutes to play…long games and some long points too. From 2/1 down in the first though they surrendered only one more game. We had lunch afterwards at the courts (they set up a temporary kitchen on top of the tennis pro shop) then I went to the gym, followed shortly after by Tina and Betsy. Somehow I lost a left, blue Feetures sock there so if anyone sees it..please take it back to the gym!

The W65 were the last to finish since Fran Chandler had a tussle with Barbora Nowak, winning 16 63 63. Nowak was Vicki Buholz’ doubles partner last week in Gandia. Vicki beat Kati Boeroecz 2,1 and Anne Frautschi/Lori Robertson (another Cup rookie) won the doubles point 0,3 over Ellen Neumann/Gundi Weiland (both doubles partners of mine in the past).

The W60 beat Denmark 3/0, ceding only three games in the three matches played…Jenny Rens won 0,1; Jenny Klitch won 0,0 and Christina Kaus/Kathy Archibald (making her Cup debut) won 0,2.

The Men’s 60s were playing next to us against Estonia; Peter Smith won 1,0; Jeff Greenwald at #1 dropped only three games and Art Hernandez/Paul Settles won 4,0. They looked really good.

The Men’s 65s beat Argentina 3/0. John Valastro at #2 and Bill Moss at #1 won in straight sets (0,1 and 2,3 respectively) and Ross Hessler/Jon Tyrell won 3/2.

The Men’s 70s beat Ireland 3/0 dropping four games in the process behind the singles play of Tim Garcia at #2, Ross Persons at #1 and Danny Carlson/John Poske in doubles.

Tomorrow is ground hog day…except we have the 2nd warm up, at 8:40-9am and it’s not supposed to be very windy tomorrow and in fact the late afternoon was pretty calm.