Hi tennis enthusiasts!! I'm here with my 4.0 men's team from the Fremont Tennis Center for the USTA National tournament. Our friends from the Decathlon Club's women's 4.0 team are also here battling it out for their national title. I'm going to add commentary every day during the tournament. I will put in a much detail as I can about the match results daily. If I can find a battery for my camera or find a fellow photographer willing to share pictures, then I'll include photos of the action. The weather is fabulous, sunny and very warm. Fortunately, it has cooled off a bit, so we will have temperatures in the 80's, not the 90's. My team will have a practice today to get used to the altitude and generally warm up. We are at 2400', so the ball tends to fly. We have to calibrate shots with spin since they behave differently at this altitude. Stay tuned, more to come...

10/28/05 - 6:36pm

Well, I fully intended to do more live updating of the journal, but the weekend has been very hectic. Unfortunately, the tournament did not go our way. We are in a flight of 4 teams from Southern Cal, Texas, and the Midwest. We lost each match 2-3. This flight is very even and very talented. Matches were lost by the difference of just a few points in many cases. As was true in districts and sectionals, it's the teams that can win the super tiebreakers that take it. We have been winning these all season, but we couldn't pull a few out in critical times. To be sure, the teams we played are great.

A very nice surprise for me was how friendly everyone is. At this level, there's the risk of playing against teams who take the tournament or themselves too seriously, but everyone I met was very nice and displayed good sportsmanship. I saw very few problems with disputed calls or temper tantrums, etc.

Yours truly did manage to pull out a win playing doubles in the second match yesterday with my 4.0 super partner Steve Lamar. He was 3-0 for the nationals. Quite impressive. Tomorrow will bring the semifinals at 8:00am for the teams that made it through their flights and then the finals will be around 11or 12. Then I may do some sightseeing in the afternoon and finally it's off to the airport tomorrow evening. I will be taking some pictures and gathering them from friends for posting on the blog. More tomorrow....