I played the Eindhoven tournament for the fifth time this year. I usually do quite badly in tournaments, however well I feel I have been playing in the run-up to them. This year I made the second round in both singles and doubles, only level D though. I went out to Mikhail a big Russian in the singles, and he went on to make the final, surviving three matches that went to championship tie-breaks. In the doubles I played with a young German called Christian whom I had not met before, we got on well and put up a reasonable fight against the eventual winners of the torunament, one of whom was clearly a good level C player and much too strong for us.
I had been due to play doubles with my friend Oliver, but he had to pull out a few days before the tournament began as his father was gravely ill. So there was nobody else fromthe north of England there, and very few from England at all. But I saw some old acquaintances including Seamus who had just won the end-of-year GLTA Championships event in Palm Springs. Other old acquaintances there were Tony Mott, Rene Gouweleeuw, Emmanuel Dufraisse and Sylvain Longerinas.
I stayed in one of the bungalows on the 't Wolfsven holiday park and found a back route to walk in - approx 35 minutes walk. It was very cold this year - minus 10 degrees celsius at times - but the bungalow was warm enough, and the forest was beautiful in the snow.
No comments:
Post a Comment