London Redbridge October 2014

Finally I am back on the GLTA Tour! You all have no idea how much I missed it, but circumstances beyond my control prevented me from playing any tournaments in the past 1 year and 8 months.
I have to thank Sheng, Ryan and especially Bhadresh  for all the tennis practise, to keep up my level and improve (well, I think so).
And now I am ending 2014 with a big bang: playing my home tournament, London, and travelling half way around the world to play the Bangkok Pride tournament in December.

After having played the London tournament in Sutton 5 times in a row, the date has now shifted to Halloween: October 24-26, and is called: LONDON HALLOWEEN CLASSIC 2014. This also means it is played indoors, and the venue is the Redbridge Sports & Leisure Centre, postcode IG6 3HD. It is located right next to Fairlop underground station on the Central (red) line.

Playing once again in the C category of course, and my doubles partner is good friend Ryan. Ryan was the Winner this year of the C-Doubles Consolation in the Manchester tournament, so we are both motivated to play well.

At 6.30AM Friday morning October 24, I was ready to go:

First Round Singles Match, look how cute! There was even a (plastic) spider on the bottom :-)

My opponent was Guillem from Barcelona. I was 0-4 down in the first set, but fought back to 3-4.
Alas, he was the better player and won 3-6, 4-6.
But in the next round, he beat a former B player, so I felt a bit better :-)

 Lovely to finally play against Jonathan, who also is part of the Organisation Team of the tournament.
It was the 2nd round of C-Consolation.






I did not stand much of a chance, but I broke his serve once and I never lost a game on "love".
Jonathan won 2-8.

What a shame Ryan and I could not get a photo with Brian & fellow Dutchman Freddie, our first round doubles opponents: we won and played extremely well 6-3, 6-3.

Our 2nd round doubles match was very tough, against 2 very solid and clever Irish guys Dennis & Barry. Even though we both did not play at our best, we kept trying but lost deservedly 4-6, 0-6.

Here are the results:

C-Singles: http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=E744747D-3BCB-4EE1-9041-A1EC50772EE6&draw=8

C-Doubles: http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx?id=E744747D-3BCB-4EE1-9041-A1EC50772EE6&draw=15


And here my tournament statistics:

http://glta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=E744747D-3BCB-4EE1-9041-A1EC50772EE6&player=201


Many thanks everybody! And a special thanks to Ryan, for being a great doubles partner!