We came away from Sectionals in Carmel with a 2-1 record, taking 2nd place (one better than last year!).
The lament, however, is: could have, should have ... we lost the first match on Friday to the eventual winners, Fair Oaks West from Santa Clara, by a slim 2-3 margin, without Scott at #1 singles, and with two captaining decisions that might have changed the outcome to a win. But nevertheless, all in all, a very good weekend, and to tell you the truth, I'm glad not to continue to have captaining anxieties all the way up to the end-of-October Nationals.
By taking 2nd place, we got an invitation to a tournament to be held next March 11-13, at the Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs, during the 1st weekend of the Indian Wells tournament. That tournament annually invites all the Sectionals runners-up to play, and waives their $500 entry fee (going to Nationals costs $500/team to enter, as well as the travel/accommodations costs). Those of us in Carmel all thought that this tournament would be more fun than Nationals -- it's close, and we can watch professional tennis too.
So, the weekend summary:
On Thursday, Jim, his wife, and I drove down to the rental house in Carmel. The house worked out really well. Big and comfortable, with lots of rooms. Strange shower facilities though, increasing in usefulness by floor. Joining us later were Nikhil, Bobby, Ben. In Carmel elsewhere was Adit. Up early on Friday to join us at warmup were Arnold, Steve, and Dr. J.
We had anticipated being able to practice on a court nearby, but it turned out not to be open. The backup was Pacific Grove High School, but it turned out that the kiddies were in session already. To the rescue was Google Maps, satellite view, where I spotted a single court also pretty close. Arnold and Dr. J were able to grab it, and the rest of us joined them for an abbreviated warmup.
Then it was onto Carmel Valley Ranch, which we reached after a series of U-turns near the destination. Picture a train of 3 cars going around in circles for a little while. We were a little early due to the warned-about construction not being there, so there were no delays.
The day was overcast, but warm.
Lineup was Adit, Bobby, Simon/Dr. J, Arnold/Ben, Nikhil/Steve.
First off was Simon/Dr. J, neither of whom were having a good day. Their match was eminently winnable, but they killed themselves with unforced errors. 2-6, 1-6. Their opponents helped them by getting back balls in order that they could make a mistake. The Fair Oaks team in general was very consistent with pretty good defensive skills.
Next off was Bobby. He was also not having a good day, with plenty of double faults. His self-rated opponent has consistently won this season, but many of his matches were against lower rated players (e.g. players just up from 3.0 last year, and players who had losing 3.5 records; he did have some close wins vs decent 3.5 competition, but no real blow-out scores, hence no DQ). 1-6, 2-6.
Nikhil/Steve had butterflies in this first match, and faced a good team that hadn't lost during Districts, and though they felt they were getting more in tune in the 2nd set, were unable to get much traction. 2-6, 3-6
So we were now down 0-3, and I was thinking this could be a blowout. Adit had lost his first set, getting bageled, and was down in the 2nd set. Arnold/Ben were still in a very close battle in the 1st set.
Adit faced their #1 singles player, undefeated all season. But not anymore! He came back to win the 2nd set after being down, and took the super-tie. A fantastic win!
Everyone was now done except for Ben/Arnold. They won their first set tiebreak with some great play, but in the 2nd set, things weren't quite so pretty, and they lost it, 2-6, and it came down to the super-tie. After the match, Arnold reported that they were very confident going into the tiebreak, and with both us, including Arnold's dad, and the Fair Oaks team watching from the side, they dominated the super-tie to get our 2nd win.
And so, we ended the first day with a rather disappointing 2-3 loss.
We watched a little of the Morgan Hill/Petaluma match, but left to get some lunch. We ate at the Forge in the Forest restaurant in Carmel-by-the-sea, where we found out some interesting things about everyone, a business idea, and drank a number of beers. During the afternoon, at the house, more beers were consumed. By dinnertime, Scott and his girlfriend, and my fiance, had arrived, and we went to dinner just down the street to a pizza place in beautiful downtown Pacific Grove.
Saturday's match was at 8am, and we planned to arrive at Chamisal at 7am, so we turned in before it got too late. The ability to warmup directly before the match, without needing to drive somewhere, with the subsequent delay in playing the match, was very welcome, and it seemed to show in everyone's quality of play.
Saturday's opponent was Petaluma, who had lost to Morgan Hill 2-3 on Friday. On Saturday, we had our 1st line lineup of Scott, Adit, Nikhil/Steve, Arnold/Ben, Bobby/Simon and we came away with a nice 4-1 win at Chamisal Tennis Club.
Bobby and Simon were first off, with a methodical win over a really fun set of opponents (well, one was a really friendly guy; the other was less talkative, but both were good sportsmen). 6-4, 6-4. We talked to the friendly guy about the Sunday match vs Fair Oaks, who we wanted Petaluma to beat. Petaluma assured us that they were try their best. Bobby bought them a pitcher of beer.
We left to watch Scott's match with our two other doubles teams having won their first sets. Scott was playing an opponent with a very similar style; less slice, but a solid get-the-ball-back type of game. Their points were long, with some good play by both players. Scott had won the 1st set in a tiebreak, despite the annoying presence of 6 small kids chattering loudly on the sidelines (kids of Scott's opponent and a Petaluma teammate's). In the 2nd set, the Petaluma guy got the best of the points; Scott's shots were often landing out. But Scott was very confident about the tiebreak. He composed himself at the end of the 2nd set, with his head in a towel, and then proceeded to handily win the supertie.
During play, there was one incident worth reporting on. Scott's opponent had given him a short ball. Scott managed to get to the ball, and get it over the net, but couldn't stop himself from running into the net. Some guy watching from another side of the court, yelled "he hit the net! He hit the net!", to which Scott's opponent said "that guy's not on my team!". Scott asked the guy to please not comment on his match, and the guy sarcastically said "can I clap?", to which Bobby yelled out "Don't be a wise-ass!" Scott's opponent again said "he's not on my team!" to make sure to dissociate himself from the guy. Turns out the guy was one of the Morgan Hill singles guys.
Meanwhile, Adit had lost a see-saw battle, with his opponent winning the 1st set easily, and him winning the 2nd set just as easily. The tiebreak was very close, but Adit lost it 8-10. News came in that our other two doubles had won, so we celebrated a 4-1 win at the culmination of Scott's match.
So now, we weren't out of it, at 1-1, but on the other hand, had no control of our destiny. Two possibilities for winning Sectionals were (a) that the self-rated guy Bobby played got his 3rd strike, or that (b) Petaluma beat them on Sunday.
We spent quite some time at Chamisal watching other teams compete. First up was an entertaining 4.0 match between Golden Gateway and some other team, then we saw a 4.5 match, also very entertaining. Later in the afternoon, I split off from the main group to spend time with my sister and parents, who took a day trip down. In the evening, the team got together at a pretty decent restaurant to spend some quality time together. Good fun. After that, Steve invited us back to his hotel, where there was a big firepit to hang out at. Turned out that closed early, so everyone went to the indoor bar instead. Some members of the 3.0 mens team and 3.0 womens team, both also at Sectionals, joined us, and a good time was had by all.
One of Bobby's theories is that he plays much better when he is hung-over. With this in mind, Bobby was having a very good time. Most of us left before too late, not expecting to see Bobby, but surprisingly, he (along with Ben and Arnold) returned shortly thereafter. But the next morning, everyone except Bobby was bright eyed and bushy tailed (as much as can be after two days of wear and tear), and went to warm-up. Bobby, meanwhile, went to McDonalds. We all met at Pebble Beach in time to get something to eat.
Sunday's match was vs Morgan Hill under overcast, humid conditions, fortunately, with no wind. Fair Oaks was playing Petaluma before us, however, so we could get a good gauge on how things were going. Turns out, not too well for Petaluma, and shortly after we started our match, Fair Oaks won, taking 1st place. I was on court, but heard that they had a raucous celebration lasting 25 minutes.
When our match pairings were called, the organizers were pretty confident that Fair Oaks would win, so introduced our match by saying that we were playing for 2nd place, with the 2nd place team getting the consolation mementos (1st place got a glass/crystal tennis racquet; we got a glass tennis ball inscribed "2010 USTA Norcal Sectionals Finalist").
We wanted to win, so went with the same lineup as Saturday.
Can't tell you much about the match, because Bobby and I were last off. Our match wasn't all that long, so the other matches evidently went pretty quickly.
Arnold/Ben finished their season undefeated, winning 6-0, 6-4; Adit continued a strong end to his season with a 6-3, 6-2 victory; Nihil/Scott, who got to play on center court, lost 3-6, 2-6, and Scott was unfortunately not able to finish his season undefeated, ending with a 2-6, 3-6 loss.
Bobby and I noticed that a large crowd had gathered, and we could hear more cheering directly to us (the spectators were 2 intervening courts away -- we were playing at the furthest court). We had won the 1st set reasonably easily, 6-4, but were in a dogfight in the 2nd set, exchanging breaks, episodes of errors and double faults as well as some long and interesting points, and ended up 6-6. We knew we must be the last match to finish. Despite our erratic play in the 2nd set, we buckled down and played quite well in the 2nd set tiebreak, winning it 7-2, and then found out it was the deciding match!
After getting the scores officially recorded, we got a surprise that we were now invited to the aforementioned tournament in Palm Springs next March. Even over the win, that lifted everyone's spirits, and it's something to look forward to. Then we took some pictures by the Sectionals banner (unfortunately, missing Adit, who had to leave as soon as his match was over, to get back to his wife and child).
Here, I digress for a bit of a background story: a couple of our players had received warnings for unsportsmanlike conduct on court (e.g. throwing racquets, swearing). Bobby decided that on Sunday, he would purposely work to get a warning, so during our match, he indeed threw the racquet more than once, and swore loudly many times (due to numerous bad shots, there was plenty of opportunity). But no warning from the official came. Someone commented that Max, the official, was just too laid back.
So now, we were taking pictures of the team, and Bobby decided to say, instead of "say cheese", "everyone say 'Morgan Hill sucks!'" As it turned out, Max was just walking by, and he said "point penalty!" And so, Bobby's wish came true. He got a point penalty at Sectionals. (Fortunately, the Morgan Hill players were all in good humor, and everyone had a good laugh. Bobby actually had meant to say "Fair Oaks sucks!")
Finally, we had a last celebratory toast of beer, and everyone made their own way back home.
And so, we took 2nd place at Sectionals. Have to say, I enjoyed this season very much, and though I was pretty down on myself before our win on Sunday about the decisions that led us to the loss to Fair Oaks, we finished the season with a team win and I feel good about the season.
The lament, however, is: could have, should have ... we lost the first match on Friday to the eventual winners, Fair Oaks West from Santa Clara, by a slim 2-3 margin, without Scott at #1 singles, and with two captaining decisions that might have changed the outcome to a win. But nevertheless, all in all, a very good weekend, and to tell you the truth, I'm glad not to continue to have captaining anxieties all the way up to the end-of-October Nationals.
By taking 2nd place, we got an invitation to a tournament to be held next March 11-13, at the Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs, during the 1st weekend of the Indian Wells tournament. That tournament annually invites all the Sectionals runners-up to play, and waives their $500 entry fee (going to Nationals costs $500/team to enter, as well as the travel/accommodations costs). Those of us in Carmel all thought that this tournament would be more fun than Nationals -- it's close, and we can watch professional tennis too.
So, the weekend summary:
On Thursday, Jim, his wife, and I drove down to the rental house in Carmel. The house worked out really well. Big and comfortable, with lots of rooms. Strange shower facilities though, increasing in usefulness by floor. Joining us later were Nikhil, Bobby, Ben. In Carmel elsewhere was Adit. Up early on Friday to join us at warmup were Arnold, Steve, and Dr. J.
We had anticipated being able to practice on a court nearby, but it turned out not to be open. The backup was Pacific Grove High School, but it turned out that the kiddies were in session already. To the rescue was Google Maps, satellite view, where I spotted a single court also pretty close. Arnold and Dr. J were able to grab it, and the rest of us joined them for an abbreviated warmup.
Then it was onto Carmel Valley Ranch, which we reached after a series of U-turns near the destination. Picture a train of 3 cars going around in circles for a little while. We were a little early due to the warned-about construction not being there, so there were no delays.
The day was overcast, but warm.
Lineup was Adit, Bobby, Simon/Dr. J, Arnold/Ben, Nikhil/Steve.
First off was Simon/Dr. J, neither of whom were having a good day. Their match was eminently winnable, but they killed themselves with unforced errors. 2-6, 1-6. Their opponents helped them by getting back balls in order that they could make a mistake. The Fair Oaks team in general was very consistent with pretty good defensive skills.
Next off was Bobby. He was also not having a good day, with plenty of double faults. His self-rated opponent has consistently won this season, but many of his matches were against lower rated players (e.g. players just up from 3.0 last year, and players who had losing 3.5 records; he did have some close wins vs decent 3.5 competition, but no real blow-out scores, hence no DQ). 1-6, 2-6.
Nikhil/Steve had butterflies in this first match, and faced a good team that hadn't lost during Districts, and though they felt they were getting more in tune in the 2nd set, were unable to get much traction. 2-6, 3-6
So we were now down 0-3, and I was thinking this could be a blowout. Adit had lost his first set, getting bageled, and was down in the 2nd set. Arnold/Ben were still in a very close battle in the 1st set.
Adit faced their #1 singles player, undefeated all season. But not anymore! He came back to win the 2nd set after being down, and took the super-tie. A fantastic win!
Everyone was now done except for Ben/Arnold. They won their first set tiebreak with some great play, but in the 2nd set, things weren't quite so pretty, and they lost it, 2-6, and it came down to the super-tie. After the match, Arnold reported that they were very confident going into the tiebreak, and with both us, including Arnold's dad, and the Fair Oaks team watching from the side, they dominated the super-tie to get our 2nd win.
And so, we ended the first day with a rather disappointing 2-3 loss.
We watched a little of the Morgan Hill/Petaluma match, but left to get some lunch. We ate at the Forge in the Forest restaurant in Carmel-by-the-sea, where we found out some interesting things about everyone, a business idea, and drank a number of beers. During the afternoon, at the house, more beers were consumed. By dinnertime, Scott and his girlfriend, and my fiance, had arrived, and we went to dinner just down the street to a pizza place in beautiful downtown Pacific Grove.
Saturday's match was at 8am, and we planned to arrive at Chamisal at 7am, so we turned in before it got too late. The ability to warmup directly before the match, without needing to drive somewhere, with the subsequent delay in playing the match, was very welcome, and it seemed to show in everyone's quality of play.
Saturday's opponent was Petaluma, who had lost to Morgan Hill 2-3 on Friday. On Saturday, we had our 1st line lineup of Scott, Adit, Nikhil/Steve, Arnold/Ben, Bobby/Simon and we came away with a nice 4-1 win at Chamisal Tennis Club.
Bobby and Simon were first off, with a methodical win over a really fun set of opponents (well, one was a really friendly guy; the other was less talkative, but both were good sportsmen). 6-4, 6-4. We talked to the friendly guy about the Sunday match vs Fair Oaks, who we wanted Petaluma to beat. Petaluma assured us that they were try their best. Bobby bought them a pitcher of beer.
We left to watch Scott's match with our two other doubles teams having won their first sets. Scott was playing an opponent with a very similar style; less slice, but a solid get-the-ball-back type of game. Their points were long, with some good play by both players. Scott had won the 1st set in a tiebreak, despite the annoying presence of 6 small kids chattering loudly on the sidelines (kids of Scott's opponent and a Petaluma teammate's). In the 2nd set, the Petaluma guy got the best of the points; Scott's shots were often landing out. But Scott was very confident about the tiebreak. He composed himself at the end of the 2nd set, with his head in a towel, and then proceeded to handily win the supertie.
During play, there was one incident worth reporting on. Scott's opponent had given him a short ball. Scott managed to get to the ball, and get it over the net, but couldn't stop himself from running into the net. Some guy watching from another side of the court, yelled "he hit the net! He hit the net!", to which Scott's opponent said "that guy's not on my team!". Scott asked the guy to please not comment on his match, and the guy sarcastically said "can I clap?", to which Bobby yelled out "Don't be a wise-ass!" Scott's opponent again said "he's not on my team!" to make sure to dissociate himself from the guy. Turns out the guy was one of the Morgan Hill singles guys.
Meanwhile, Adit had lost a see-saw battle, with his opponent winning the 1st set easily, and him winning the 2nd set just as easily. The tiebreak was very close, but Adit lost it 8-10. News came in that our other two doubles had won, so we celebrated a 4-1 win at the culmination of Scott's match.
So now, we weren't out of it, at 1-1, but on the other hand, had no control of our destiny. Two possibilities for winning Sectionals were (a) that the self-rated guy Bobby played got his 3rd strike, or that (b) Petaluma beat them on Sunday.
We spent quite some time at Chamisal watching other teams compete. First up was an entertaining 4.0 match between Golden Gateway and some other team, then we saw a 4.5 match, also very entertaining. Later in the afternoon, I split off from the main group to spend time with my sister and parents, who took a day trip down. In the evening, the team got together at a pretty decent restaurant to spend some quality time together. Good fun. After that, Steve invited us back to his hotel, where there was a big firepit to hang out at. Turned out that closed early, so everyone went to the indoor bar instead. Some members of the 3.0 mens team and 3.0 womens team, both also at Sectionals, joined us, and a good time was had by all.
One of Bobby's theories is that he plays much better when he is hung-over. With this in mind, Bobby was having a very good time. Most of us left before too late, not expecting to see Bobby, but surprisingly, he (along with Ben and Arnold) returned shortly thereafter. But the next morning, everyone except Bobby was bright eyed and bushy tailed (as much as can be after two days of wear and tear), and went to warm-up. Bobby, meanwhile, went to McDonalds. We all met at Pebble Beach in time to get something to eat.
Sunday's match was vs Morgan Hill under overcast, humid conditions, fortunately, with no wind. Fair Oaks was playing Petaluma before us, however, so we could get a good gauge on how things were going. Turns out, not too well for Petaluma, and shortly after we started our match, Fair Oaks won, taking 1st place. I was on court, but heard that they had a raucous celebration lasting 25 minutes.
When our match pairings were called, the organizers were pretty confident that Fair Oaks would win, so introduced our match by saying that we were playing for 2nd place, with the 2nd place team getting the consolation mementos (1st place got a glass/crystal tennis racquet; we got a glass tennis ball inscribed "2010 USTA Norcal Sectionals Finalist").
We wanted to win, so went with the same lineup as Saturday.
Can't tell you much about the match, because Bobby and I were last off. Our match wasn't all that long, so the other matches evidently went pretty quickly.
Arnold/Ben finished their season undefeated, winning 6-0, 6-4; Adit continued a strong end to his season with a 6-3, 6-2 victory; Nihil/Scott, who got to play on center court, lost 3-6, 2-6, and Scott was unfortunately not able to finish his season undefeated, ending with a 2-6, 3-6 loss.
Bobby and I noticed that a large crowd had gathered, and we could hear more cheering directly to us (the spectators were 2 intervening courts away -- we were playing at the furthest court). We had won the 1st set reasonably easily, 6-4, but were in a dogfight in the 2nd set, exchanging breaks, episodes of errors and double faults as well as some long and interesting points, and ended up 6-6. We knew we must be the last match to finish. Despite our erratic play in the 2nd set, we buckled down and played quite well in the 2nd set tiebreak, winning it 7-2, and then found out it was the deciding match!
After getting the scores officially recorded, we got a surprise that we were now invited to the aforementioned tournament in Palm Springs next March. Even over the win, that lifted everyone's spirits, and it's something to look forward to. Then we took some pictures by the Sectionals banner (unfortunately, missing Adit, who had to leave as soon as his match was over, to get back to his wife and child).
Here, I digress for a bit of a background story: a couple of our players had received warnings for unsportsmanlike conduct on court (e.g. throwing racquets, swearing). Bobby decided that on Sunday, he would purposely work to get a warning, so during our match, he indeed threw the racquet more than once, and swore loudly many times (due to numerous bad shots, there was plenty of opportunity). But no warning from the official came. Someone commented that Max, the official, was just too laid back.
So now, we were taking pictures of the team, and Bobby decided to say, instead of "say cheese", "everyone say 'Morgan Hill sucks!'" As it turned out, Max was just walking by, and he said "point penalty!" And so, Bobby's wish came true. He got a point penalty at Sectionals. (Fortunately, the Morgan Hill players were all in good humor, and everyone had a good laugh. Bobby actually had meant to say "Fair Oaks sucks!")
Finally, we had a last celebratory toast of beer, and everyone made their own way back home.
And so, we took 2nd place at Sectionals. Have to say, I enjoyed this season very much, and though I was pretty down on myself before our win on Sunday about the decisions that led us to the loss to Fair Oaks, we finished the season with a team win and I feel good about the season.
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