the entertaining write-up! - United States Court Tennis

More documents

Recommendations

Info

That night we went out to eat with the English and Australian teams for a bit of camaraderie, in the spirit which I would imagine the Bathurst Cup was founded upon. Over the course of dinner, it was revealed that this was something like the fourth straight night that the English team had eaten steak!! This then lead us to the revelation that we had both been eating breakfast at the same boulangerie but their breakfast consisted of chocolate éclairs! Armed with this insider information, Kris and I immediately started on the Team England Official Training Program and ordered steak at dinner, had a pint or two afterwards and subsequently got a chocolate éclair the next morning. Even though we were down 2‐0, we were optimistic that we would do better in doubles. I am a much better doubles player than I am singles player, so I was looking forward to redemption. Michael Do and I had just won the Cherry Blossom doubles title the day before we left for Paris, so my confidence was running high and Kris having a lawn tennis background could handle the “heat” of England’s forcing. Kris got off to a bit of a slow start but I was playing much better than I had been the previous day. This didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of the match as Spike and David won the first set 6‐0 and the second set 6‐1. Even though we weren’t winning the games I felt like we were playing close to their level and were in most of the games. The third set started in the same manner as the first two sets except we won a couple of games. Then the impossible happened, we went on a run. I started to find the range on my force and both Kris and I were volleying well. If I recall correctly, we were down 5‐2 and won the next three games to level the match at 5‐5. I was serving at 5‐5 to Spike and missed the first serve that had been giving Spike some trouble during the match and Spike made me pay by hitting the hardest force we had seen straight into the dedans right between us. Spike did the same again on the next serve but missed the dedans and created a chase. We changed sides at 30‐Love facing two good chases. They finally shut the door on us, but we were proud of almost taking a set off of two of the best amateurs in the world (click here for video highlights). We were full of anticipation on the morning of Day 3, the reverse singles. Full of anticipation not because we thought we would do any better, but rather the Paris marathon was that morning and we were awoken at the crack of dawn to the sound of a full‐force marching band! Therefore, with so much time before our match we became quite anxious. Since England had clinched the rubber by winning the doubles, they elected to play their “reserve” players. I had to face the confident and prodigal Jamie Douglas. Over the course our dinner a few nights prior, it was also discovered that Jamie’s dad had beaten me in the finals of the Cherry Blossom a couple of years ago and it seemed that fate had afforded me this chance at payback against the Douglas clan. However, it was I who was the one who had to pay once again. I’m not sure whether it was because his girlfriend had just arrived that day or what, but he put on quite a display for the spectators including a main wall boast that destroyed my video camera in the dedans! (click here for video) Therefore, I will be extremely weary going forward to play anyone with the surname of Douglas. Down to our last match, Kris played England’s other alternate David Harms. Mr. Harms was very friendly with us in the days prior and seems like a genuinely decent fellow…that was until you got him on the court and he was downright merciless! Kris again played well and although he lost 6‐2 6‐2, he very well could’ve won by that score, as most games were competitive. Usually Sunday mornings are for sleeping in, but the Olympic torch was winding its way through the streets of Paris and the sirens were blaring so no sleep for the weary. We thought we were in good
shape going into the consolation rubber with France as we had been adjusting to both the time change and the court gradually each day, but after a hard fought day one we were again down 2‐0. I was thrashed by Julien Bey and Kris fought nobly against Charles Blanchot, but couldn’t quite win the “deuce” games. In my opinion, home court advantage played a big part in these matches as Julien and Charles looked way too comfortable with the play of the court and knew where each ball was headed (bad bounces and all!). Kris’ birthday was the next day (April 8 th ) and what better way to celebrate then to beat the French in doubles and extend our tete‐a‐tete another day? However, we had a few extracurriculars to deal with first. The Club had arranged for some of us to play Trinquet that morning. Trinquet is a mix between Jai Alai and Paume and played with wooden racquets in the SmashBall style. We played for 2 straight hours and it was great fun! Kris and I took on the “Rest of the World” team (Blanchot, Harms, and Sayer) and managed to actually win a few sets…our first of the week! The two hours flew by and we had to hustle to the Metro to make it back to the club in time for our doubles match. We had a few minutes to collect ourselves and came to the realization that Trinquet is pretty tiring, especially when you don’t know what you are doing! Very well planned France, soften us up a little in the morning ☺ We certainly didn’t need much warm‐up for our doubles match against Blanchot and the talented youngster Mathieu Sarlangue, whose father I believe was the club champion for 10 straight years . As expected, this match was much more competitive than the matches earlier in the tournament. We lost the first set 6‐3 and I think that was a “trinquet transitional” set as we had to slowly remember how to hit our Paume groundstrokes rather than trinquet shots. However, once we shook off the trinquet we played true to form and rallied back to take the second set 6‐2. We were (finally!) playing well and carried the momentum into the third set to take a 5‐3 lead. At this point, there was rumbling in the dedans…not about how well we were playing, but rather about how long our match was taking as England v Australia were due to play after us and we were running out of our allotted time. Kris and I became distracted by this and lost focus. This short lapse allowed France to rally back to 5‐5 and eventually steal the third set 6‐5. That one hurt, I must say. The week’s matches and the trinquet earlier that morning caused Kris to “hit the wall” physically in the fourth set and I was trying to do too much to compensate, so it was a recipe for disaster. We wound up losing the fourth set and in doing so I felt quite horrible that we couldn’t deliver a victory to Kris for his birthday. So what is one to do in the face of such abject failure? Celebrate, of course! One of the members at Prince’s Court, who is originally from France, made us promise that we would visit one of his favorite bars in Paris. So, that was our first stop as we needed to properly toast Kris’ birthday and we were certainly ready for a drink after the last few days of defeat. Even though we were completely overmatched on the court, we still have pride and it does hurt a bit to get crushed day after
Page 1 and 2: The 2008 Bathurst Cup a selective m
Page 3: one of us goes down then we would b

the entertaining write-up! - United States Court Tennis

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?