London Sutton August 2012

My home tournament, playing it for the 6th time: more than I played in any other tournament. I still count the Sutton-London tournament as my home tournament, even though I now live in Brighton: it is still my closest tournament.

Once again it is held at the beautiful venue in Sutton: www.suttontennisacademy.com

This is my final tournament in 2012: simply because I can not afford any more trips.
Unless a sudden generous sponsor pops up...

I entered in C-Singles and C-Doubles: my doubles partner is Tony, American guy who lives in Switzerland. It will be a nice reunion with a lovely friend :-)
It is nice to also have a Consolation round in the doubles, to guarantee me at least 4 matches in total.
O and no 3rd sets being played: replaced by a super tie-break: tie-break until 10.


C-Singles first round I had a bye, luck of the draw. My 2nd round opponent was Vivek, Londoner:

He was way too good for me, even though a string of my racket broke early in the match and had to continue with my back up racket: 1-6, 2-6.

Our first round C-Doubles match was against Londoners Darren & Ralph; they were the nr 4 seeds.
In a 2 and a half hour match we only just lost:
5-7, 6-2 (after 0-2 down) and 8-10 in the super tie-break, after having been 0-5 down and coming back to 8-9.

Next day was Consolation Round day. My first round match was against Scotsman Lachlan.
I won 8-4! It went even until 4-4 but then Lachlan had no answer against my solid play.

So, into the next round: Spanish guy Manuel was my opponent and he was the nr 5 seed, so surprisingly he lost in his first round. I lost 6-8 after I was 3-0 and 6-4 up. But after 6-4,  Manuel showed his true class and I had no chance.

The Doubles Consolation Round was just 1 match: the FINAL, because all other teams pulled out of the Consolation. Their loss.....
We played the Consolation Final against good friend Gilles and Erik the Viking.
The match lasted over 2 hours, but Tony & I won!
The final score was 5-7, 6-2 (after 0-2 down) and 10-5 in the super tie-break.

Proud owners of the C-Singles Consolation Winners' trophy. A video of the award ceremony will be uploaded later, that is if Google Blogger/Blogspot will allow me to do so...

And no blog posting would be complete without a close up of my well earned and derserved trophy:

I would like to thank Dexter and Hiroshi for using my camera phone like a pro!

Talking about pro: Rob Falconer was the official tournament photographer, and he also took some action shots of me. This was during my first match against Vivek.
You can see I am actually with both feet at least 10cm off the ground!

Thank you Rob for these shots, and also thank you for agreeing for me to advertise you on my blog.

 

If you think you were photographed on court playing at the tournament and would like to see or buy some of the images, please email Rob Falconer Event Photography on robf.enquiry@gmail.com with a thumbnail or small facepic of yourself for visual identification, and Rob will put your pictures in an online gallery for you. He has a gallery of 400 pictures from the tournament available, on Rob's website:

 http://www.zen25626.zen.co.uk/tli2012




The results in C-Singles and C-Doubles:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=E482D30B-9F7B-47C3-8ACA-5CF3E5D8F583&draw=19

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=E482D30B-9F7B-47C3-8ACA-5CF3E5D8F583&draw=14


This is an overview of my matches and my statistics:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=E482D30B-9F7B-47C3-8ACA-5CF3E5D8F583&player=3

Amsterdam May 2012

This is the logo for this year's biggest GLTA tournament in the world, in case we forgot the meaning of Pentecote, or "Pinksteren" in Dutch...

Godelinde & I were playing Mixed Doubles again, in D.
The new tournament organisers changed the competition drastically, by adding group stages before the elimination rounds: a bit like the football Champions League.
Some players even had to play a Qualification match or even round to earn their place in the main draw.
There are no Consolation rounds, as everyone plays at least 2 matches in groups of 3. Only the group winners advance.

Very strange to see that Godelinde & me, Silver Medal winners at the last Gay Games, were put in a qualification group; while other couples with no ranking points at all in Mixed Doubles, actually made it into the main group stages already...
And even in C-Singles, there was a qualification group. One of the players in it, has more ranking points than me, and I already made it through to the main group stages.
I wonder what the criteria were to have to play qualification; because it is not your ranking, which would have been fair.

Godelinde had 2 hoodie tops printed with our nicknames on it, so not only we are a great team, we also look good together: Gupje is Godelinde's nickname, as her last name is Gubbels. Gupje in Dutch is also a little fish. My nickname is Egeltje, which means little hedgehog in English. It is what my hair looks like when it is really short.

It was too warm to wear it all the time, but in the evening, it was perfect like this:

My first D-Singles group match was against Berlin based Australian Gavin.
He was the nr 7 seed, and I lost; he was just better and I could not cope with his topspin: 2-6, 1-6.

Not long after this match, my second opponent was waiting: aganst Italian Claudio, I also lost
2-6, 1-6 but I felt I played a bit better than in my first match, but I was not patient enough.

Now I could focus entirely on our D-Mixed Doubles. Our first match in the Qualification group, was against Gladys & Pim, also Dutch. We won 6-4, 6-1, so a great start.

Nearly straight away after this, we had to play our second and last Qualification match, against Beebs & Jurgen, also Dutch. We won 6-2, 6-0. So, we made it through to the main group matches.

Our first match was against Bob & Ellekari, the nr1 seeds and also Dutch.
We won 6-2, 6-2 and played really well.


Our second and final group match, against Robert & Christine, Dutch as well, was the decider:
We won 6-2, 6-3. So we made it to the FINAL!

The FINAL of D-Mixed Doubles was against Dave & Emma, both Dutch, and both playing in C-Doubles! Emma even made it to the Semi-Final in C-Doubles. We knew it was a tough match against 2 C-players. We played really well, but no surprise they were just a bit too good for us.
We lost 4-6, 4-6 and we deserved the bubbly on the court as well:

Well, eagerly awaiting the trophy ceremony, and this photo was taken by the official tournament photographer. Next to us are the D-Women's Doubles runners up:

And this is a close up of our "trophy", if you can call it trophy..... Yes it is just a towel:

A special thanks to my brother Wilbert for being there on Saturday and using my new camera phone!


To conclude, here are the results in C-Singles and D-Mixed Doubles:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=6DCF2EB7-205C-4F96-8CCD-99F7CC0DE782&draw=168

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=6DCF2EB7-205C-4F96-8CCD-99F7CC0DE782&draw=210



And a list of the winners and runners up:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/winners.aspx?id=6DCF2EB7-205C-4F96-8CCD-99F7CC0DE782



Of course, my matches and stats are here too:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=6DCF2EB7-205C-4F96-8CCD-99F7CC0DE782&player=26

Paul

Paul Hickey, my Doubles partner in 2009 and above all, a lovely and determined person has sadly passed away. May you Rest In Peace, Paul.

Dusseldorf Essen April 2012

For the first time a tournament in C for me. The venue in Essen was at a stunning location next to the Rhein:

This is the stadium centre court of traditional tennis club ETUF:

My very first C-Singles match was against Juan Jose, a Spanish guy living in Prague.

It was his first GLTA tournament, so we were both C virgins:

It was very difficult to play on a very slow clay surface where the ball hardly bounced. And Juan was a very tough opponent: I lost the first set 0-6...

But in the 2nd set I was 2-0 up, but then Juan came back and made it 3-4. But then I won 3 games in a row, so I WON the 2nd set 6-4!

The 3rd and final set was a real nailbiting thriller: After having had 2 matchpoints against me, I made it to the tie-break. In the tie-break Juan had another 2 matchpoints, but I survived both again.

Then on my first matchpoint, Juan hit the ball long, so I WON! My nerves of steel did it again :-)

The score in the end was: 0-6, 6-4, 7-6 (9-7).

Time to celebrate my victory: (Nic, I know it was not on the same day, but still...)

My second round in Singles was against Spanish guy Ruben, who is a semi-professional umpire. Also for him it was his first GLTA tournament.

It showed very quickly that Ruben was far too good for C: in the first round he had beaten Bert (my doubles partner) 6-0, 6-0. And he beat me 6-0, 6-0 without any effort.

My first round in C-Doubles, with Dutch speaking German guy Bert, was against Sheamus and Nic (my winning D-Doubles partner in London 2011). They were too good for us: 3-6, 0-6.

No matches for me on the Saturday anymore, so I went sightseeing in Essen.

That's why I missed a call from Andre (tournament organiser) and Patrick (GLTA commissioner), who wanted to re-instate me and disqualify Ruben. I could have played in the 3rd Round which was the Quarter Final...

Here are the results in C Singles and C Doubles:

Needless to say that Ruben went on to win the C-Singles with so much ease, that he only lost 12 service games in 5 matches...

Nice to see that Juan Jose won the Consolation in C-Singles: well deserved and congratulations!

 

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=A0BC8F17-6C6A-4CE2-A97B-79F695962DFA&draw=21

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=A0BC8F17-6C6A-4CE2-A97B-79F695962DFA&draw=17

Here are my tournament statistics:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=A0BC8F17-6C6A-4CE2-A97B-79F695962DFA&player=13

Thank you so much for your support, friendship and using my (new) camera phone: Cory, Tony and Christian :-)

Last but not least, Bert, thanks for being my doubles partner.

Tony took this picture of me relaxing at the tennis venue. Please note my jacket :-)