Three matches were played today.
Orhun Gulay has to go away for a while, so he wanted to get his singles matches played. He got himself replaced in the Mixed Doubles.
When I saw Orhun as I was arriving and he was leaving, he was in a hurry, and didn’t want to pose for a photo alone, and his opponents had already gone.
In the first of his matches, Orhun Gulay took on Peter Farrell, who plays a reasonable game of singles. Orhun plays a similar game. From the score, it looks like the first set was pretty tight, going to a tie break, which Orhun won. In the second set, Orhun got more of an upper hand, winning it 6-2 to take the match 7-6 6-2.
Orhun had also arranged a second round match for the winner of the first match, which thus involved Orhun Gulay versus Brendan Fox, who has played for a team, I am told . Brendan won the match 6-0 6-1, and next faces Richard Keep, the third seed.
There was also a Mixed Doubles match with Simon Defoe & Anna Ganev playing Peter Davies & Emily Harrold. Simon has a decent serve and good ground strokes, and is tall, enabling him to dominate the net. Anna played well, getting back most things within reach, often with a floated ground stroke landing just inside the base line. Emily is very steady, with excellent mobility. She can time the ball well, even off awkward balls, to produce decent pace. She has a good serve, groundstrokes and volleys, but is relatively easy to lob.
Emily and Peter (me) are also playing in the Cumberland tournament (which goes on over 3 months over summer), and we played a match there last weekend. Emily thought that today’s match was at the Cumberland, and I managed to forget my mobile phone, so there was a delay in starting the match while Emily drove from the Cumberland. Fortunately the two are less then a five minute drive apart.
Simon started with a good service hold, but Emily and Peter were able to gradually assert themselves in the other games. The main issue was keeping the ball away from Simon at the net. On Anna’s serve Simon sometimes tried to cover the soft, angled, crosscourt shots, but in doing so, left himself exposed to a pass down the line.
Simon and Anna got three games in each set, for a 6-3 6-3 victory to Emily and Peter.
