Charleston Night Session

Saturday in Charleston has been very nice. The weather has cooperated and we have had mostly sunny skies with no rain. High temp. was probably around 85 degrees with relatively low humidity. Good conditions to play in. The sand is still very compact, especially center court. No injuries directly due to the packed sand. Mark Williams did sprain his ankle vs. Fred and Anthony. Fred came under the net and Mark landed on him. It could be said that if the sand were not so compact, Fred's foot would have gone into the sand and there would have been more give when Mark came down on top of him. As it is, there was no give and Mark sprained it pretty badly from what I hear.

No major upsets in this tourney with the exception of Dax/Jeff and Ring/Olsen taking 13th place finishes. They were the 6th and 5th seeds respectively. Dax and Jeff lost their first match of the day on Friday to Nick and Billy. They beat a qualifier team and then lost their first match on Saturday morning to Paul Baxter and Dain Blanton. Little surprising there but perhaps Jeff is still rusty from his surgery. I would think they would win that match being a blocker/digger team vs. a couple of tweener guys.

Ring/Olsen lost their first match on Friday to Loomis/Stolfus. Came back later that day with a win vs. a quali team but lost Saturday morning to Scott Wong and Aaron Watchfogel. Looked like a tough battle by the scores. Would have thought they would have beat Wong and Aaron. Aaron switched to the right side for the first time in a long time and I would have thought an established team like Ring/Olsen would have beat a new team with a new right side guy. But, that is why they play the game. Wong/Aaron and Paul/Dain both ended up taking a 9th place finish in the tourney.

Other teams to note are Loomis/Stolfus with a 9th place finish as did Lucena/Strickland. Seems like Billy and Nick just can't quite get over the hump. They are consistently good and have been around the 9th to 12th seed all year long. I think they can get to a final four and then who knows. They are good blocker/defender team. I think to get to a final four, Billy needs to sideout more consistently and hopefully Nick can score some cheap and easy points with his jump serve. They are right there and should have beat KK and Wong in the first game. I thought they got hosed on a couple of bad calls by the ref and they let it effect them on the next point.

Medel and Fred were solid again in 7th as were Sean and Furbs. Medel and Fred had a great chance to get to 5th if they could have taken advantage of Mark Williams injury. I thought Sean and Furbs would do better too. They played well against us. I didn't see the game but I heard Hyden/Keenan served Furbs every ball and he made a lot of errors. Surprised me as I thought they would be in the final four at this tourney.

Phil and I played in the night session as the last match. They got a late start due to trying to fix up the court. Didn't help by the way. We ended around 11pm Saturday night. We played very well in winning 15 and 13. I sided out fairly good. Made a couple of unforced hitting errors but other than that we were solid. There were a lot of good rallies for the crowd as both KK and I had quite a few spectacular digs. KK had an amazing dig on Phil in the second game. Wong was serving me and I told Phil to watch for the on 2 ball. I set him on 2 and Wong was nowhere to be found. Phil hit the ball as hard as he could to about the 15 foot line and KK dug it. I swear it moved KK back about 5 feet. Wong set him but it was off the net a bit and we were able to dig it and convert. Really impressive though. Right now it is a close toss up between KK and Rosy for best defensive player on tour. KK hasn't played all the tourneys but he is playing some amazing defense.

So today we play the winner of Gibb/Rosy and Hyden/Keenan at 1pm. Stein and Lambo play the winner of KK/Wong and Casey/Mark. See if we can't avenge one of our losses to either team. Last time we played Hyden/Keenan in Tampa quarters we lost. Last time we played Gibb/Rosy in Atlanta crossover semis we lost. See if we can't improve.