Today was the sixth day of the ITF World Individual Championships and my doubles partner (Pam Cooke, CA) and I finally played our first doubles match! Pam arrived so long ago she’s now a permanent Florida resident. We warmed up at Mirasol; I warmed up our host, Jenny Klitch for her singles match and then we warmed up for doubles. We decided to wear hot pink shirts and white bottoms today and certainly got a lot of comments on our neon attire today.
We first played Karien Theeuwes from Netherlands and Betty Michel of France. Karien played #3 on the Dutch Connolly Cup team and Betty played #2 on the French Connolly Cup team so we knew they were good players. We started strongly though and won 60 62 in about an hour.
We had 1 1/2 hours till our second match, against the #5 seeds, and watched some matches; Tina Karwasky was playing Chris French (to whom I lost yesterday) and Diane Barker played Susan Wright. Diane played a good match to avenge the loss she suffered to Susan at the Clay nationals, winning 61 64; Chris French rebounded from another slow start to beat Tina 16 62 64. According to onlookers the 2-2 game went on for-over a dozen deuces and Chris won it; Tina went up 4-3; Chris then won the final three games. She’s a great competitor, as is Tina.
We played our second match against the #4 seeds, Ann Clark from Gr. Britain and Susana Villaverde of Switzerland. Suzanna is a former world champion in doubles and played #1 on the Swiss Connolly Cup team; Ann played the deciding match for Gr. Britain against the USA in the Connolly Cup final; it was a tough team we had to play. We started slowly, especially me and Susana was driving her forehand low and coming in to net while Ann sees the play early and has amazing hands and drop volleys. We lost the first set 62; we broke to start the second, then they immediately broke and held; down 1-2 Pam played a fantastic game on serve; we stayed on serve till 4-4 when we finally broke. I had to try to serve out the set; we had a long deuce game and won it on our second set point. In ITF events there are no third sets, only a match tiebreak (first team to 10 points with a 2 point lead). We won the first point and never looked back; we played an excellent tiebreak and won it 10-4 to reach the semis, where we play Diane and Susan the top seeds. We were seeded fifth.
The match of the day was a men’s semi in the 45s between Americans Eoin (pronounced “owen”) Collins (TX) and Oren Motevassel (CA). They started when we began our first doubles match and didn’t finish till after we’d completed our second match; Collins won 76 (6) in the third. Eoin only came to the worlds to play with Jeff Tarango; Jeff withdrew after losing first round on Sunday but Eoin hung around to play singles and he’s in the final!
Tomorrow Patricia Zerdan (TX) plays in the women’s 35 singles final and Gee Gee Garvin (CA)/Simona Bruetting (CO)play in the 35 doubles final.
40s: Willie Dann (NC)/Lew Miller (CO)are in the doubles final and Dann was a singles semifinalist.
45s: Julie Cass (TX) plays Karine Quentrec (France) in the semis; Julie and Vesna McKenna (Florida) edged Shelly Works (TX)/Julie Dybenthal (Australia) in a match tiebreak to advance to the final against Quentrec/Sybille Niox-Chateau. in men’s doubles there are a lot of Americans in the semis: Aldo Burga (Florida)/Ricardo Mendivil (Florida); Carl Clark/Mario Tabares (Florida) and Jeff Cohen (Florida) (playing with a French player); Eoin Collins is in the 45 men’s final;
50s: In the women’s singles, Fran Chandler (TN) is in the final! She beat Susan Boyer (Florida) in the semis and Tracy Houk (CA) lost in the other semi to a French player; in women’s doubles Chandler/Sue Webb (of Great Britain but she lives in Tennessee) beat Houk/Anne Kerwin-Payne (CA) in the quarters and play Ros Balodis/Leanne Swaysland (Australia) in the semis they took out Erika Smith/Mary Dailey (Florida) in the quarters; Judy Newman (CA)/Vicki Buholz (TX)are in the semis of the doubles. 50 men’s doubles: Louis Ballantyne/Horacio Rearte (Florida)are in the semis. Judy Newman/Michael Mehmedbasich (CA) reached the semis of mixed (but lost). Smith/Rick Leach (CA) are in the mixed semis.
55s: Danny Waldman (D.C) takes on Australian Glenn Busby (who beat Mark Vines (VA) today) in the final; Diane Barker (SC) plays Chris French from Gr. Britain; Vines/Wes Cash (TN) and Mike Tammen (OR)/Waldman are in the doubles semis as is Alexander Pier (playing with a Brazilian player); three of the four 55 women’s doubles teams are American: Barker/Wright; Karwasky/Mary Ginnard (Florida)and Nichols/Cooke.
To see results click on “order of play” then draws or matches at this link: http://www.itftennis.com/seniors/tournaments/tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100030186
All players or teams which reach the semis are medalists here.
Rain is predicted for tomorrow but I hope it arrived early and we get to play tomorrow.
Below is a photo of Pam and me in our neon pink shirts from an earlier tournament.
