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