Three matches appear to have been played today.
In the singles, Fred Davidson played the fourth seed, Greg Lim on grass court 2, prior to the men’s second team match. No one has sent me anything on this match, apart from the result. Greg won the match 6-0 6-0.
In parallel with the men’s league match on the grass, Barry Adamson & Matias Piazza played a men’s doubles match against the top seeds Logan Mair & Stephen Cooke. Barry and Matias had game points, but fate was unkind in that net balls bounced the wrong side etc., so it wasn’t to be. By common consent, the 6-0 6-0 win by the top seeds does not properly reflect the competitive nature of the match.
Sabine Casparie played Elena Valarche on a grass court. Elena’s view of how to play tennis is basically to get to the net and volley, and she will generally win a match unless the opponent’s ground strokes are good enough to pass her or their lob is good enough. Sabine basically needed to keep Elena away from the net somehow or lob her successfully. Elena can jump a lot higher if it is required to hit a high volley.
Elena won only a few points directly from her service, but was generally successful in chipping and coming in to the net, where she won most of her points. Sabine did circumvent Elena’s strategy some of the time, but it wasn’t enough to stop Elena winning 6-2 6-1.
As it seems to have caused a little confusion, it may be worth pointing out that there are now two “Elena”s in the club – Elena Valarche (with a Russian accent, pronounced “ell” “ain” “ah” with the stress on the “ain”) and Elena Pavlidou (“ell” “en” “ah” with the stress on the “ell”)! However, that is less than half the number of “Alex”es in the club, mostly among the men, and this does not seem to be a major problem.
