Moira Duncan provided a tasty Moroccan lamb tagine, with complementary yoghurt dessert, which went down well.
In the ladies’ semi-final, Julia Abbot played Marjan Denis, the title holder. Julia is a consistent player with decent speed about the court, but Marjan has the stronger strokes, as well as being fast about court, though she may not always be as steady. Although it was a good game to watch, Marjan always had the slight edge, including more aggressive placement, and won the match 6-2 6-2. The photo has incredible contrasts with black storm clouds looming in the background while the club courts are in brilliant sunshine!
One of the two men’s doubles semi-finals played featured Greg Lim and James McKenzie, the third seeds, against title holders Cedric de la Chaise and Peter Fitzgerald. For those that don’t already know, Peter and his family are soon off to Japan for a two year assignment.
In the first set matters were relatively even, with Greg and James playing somewhere near their potential, the difference usually being Cedric’s ability to make the correct placement with plenty of disguise to hit a winner, often at close quarters. This enabled the holders to win the first set 6-4. In the second set Greg and James could not sustain the level required to compete fully for every game, and their error rate went up, enabling Cedric and Peter to register a 6-4 6-1 win. It would have been good to capture the body language and expressions on Greg and James’ face after one of their unforced errors, because such a picture might have summed up their view of the second set very well.
The other men’s doubles semi-final took place on court 3, to the disappointment of spectators who had selected seats giving a good view over courts 1 and 2. Marcio Sugui and Ed Fitzgerald took on the second seeds Sultan Gangji and Graeme Pearson. Although there was some good tennis played, and some good serving from Ed, Sultan and Graeme were playing well, unlike a previous match in which Sultan appeared to make a number of unforced error, and the result was a 6-1 6-0 win to Sultan and Graeme.
