the entertaining write-up! - United States Court Tennis
the entertaining write-up! - United States Court Tennis
the entertaining write-up! - United States Court Tennis
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shape going into <strong>the</strong> consolation rubber with France as we had been adjusting to both <strong>the</strong> time change<br />
and <strong>the</strong> court gradually each day, but after a hard fought day one we were again down 2‐0. I was<br />
thrashed by Julien Bey and Kris fought nobly against Charles Blanchot, but couldn’t quite win <strong>the</strong><br />
“deuce” games. In my opinion, home court advantage played a big part in <strong>the</strong>se matches as Julien and<br />
Charles looked way too comfortable with <strong>the</strong> play of <strong>the</strong> court and knew where each ball was headed<br />
(bad bounces and all!).<br />
Kris’ birthday was <strong>the</strong> next day (April 8 th ) and<br />
what better way to celebrate <strong>the</strong>n to beat <strong>the</strong><br />
French in doubles and extend our tete‐a‐tete<br />
ano<strong>the</strong>r day? However, we had a few<br />
extracurriculars to deal with first. The Club had<br />
arranged for some of us to play Trinquet that<br />
morning. Trinquet is a mix between Jai Alai and<br />
Paume and played with wooden racquets in <strong>the</strong><br />
SmashBall style. We played for 2 straight hours<br />
and it was great fun! Kris and I took on <strong>the</strong><br />
“Rest of <strong>the</strong> World” team (Blanchot, Harms, and<br />
Sayer) and managed to actually win a few<br />
sets…our first of <strong>the</strong> week! The two hours flew by and we had to hustle to <strong>the</strong> Metro to make it back to<br />
<strong>the</strong> club in time for our doubles match. We had a few minutes to collect ourselves and came to <strong>the</strong><br />
realization that Trinquet is pretty tiring, especially when you don’t know what you are doing! Very well<br />
planned France, soften us <strong>up</strong> a little in <strong>the</strong> morning ☺ We certainly didn’t need much warm‐<strong>up</strong> for our<br />
doubles match against Blanchot and <strong>the</strong> talented youngster Mathieu Sarlangue, whose fa<strong>the</strong>r I believe<br />
was <strong>the</strong> club champion for 10 straight years . As expected, this match was much more competitive than<br />
<strong>the</strong> matches earlier in <strong>the</strong> tournament. We lost <strong>the</strong> first set 6‐3 and I think that was a “trinquet<br />
transitional” set as we had to slowly remember how to hit our Paume groundstrokes ra<strong>the</strong>r than<br />
trinquet shots. However, once we shook off <strong>the</strong> trinquet we played true to form and rallied back to take<br />
<strong>the</strong> second set 6‐2. We were (finally!) playing well and carried <strong>the</strong> momentum into <strong>the</strong> third set to take<br />
a 5‐3 lead. At this point, <strong>the</strong>re was rumbling in <strong>the</strong> dedans…not about how well we were playing, but<br />
ra<strong>the</strong>r about how long our match was taking as England v Australia were due to play after us and we<br />
were running out of our allotted time. Kris and I became distracted by this and lost focus. This short<br />
lapse allowed France to rally back to 5‐5 and eventually steal <strong>the</strong> third set 6‐5. That one hurt, I must say.<br />
The week’s matches and <strong>the</strong> trinquet earlier that morning caused Kris to “hit <strong>the</strong> wall” physically in <strong>the</strong><br />
fourth set and I was trying to do too much to compensate, so it was a recipe for disaster. We wound <strong>up</strong><br />
losing <strong>the</strong> fourth set and in doing so I felt quite horrible that we couldn’t deliver a victory to Kris for his<br />
birthday. So what is one to do in <strong>the</strong> face of such abject failure? Celebrate, of course!<br />
One of <strong>the</strong> members at Prince’s <strong>Court</strong>, who is originally from France, made us promise that we would<br />
visit one of his favorite bars in Paris. So, that was our first stop as we needed to properly toast Kris’<br />
birthday and we were certainly ready for a drink after <strong>the</strong> last few days of defeat. Even though we were<br />
completely overmatched on <strong>the</strong> court, we still have pride and it does hurt a bit to get crushed day after