Oh it was so much fun !!!! Here is the whole account , truth and nothing but the truth ...
Here's the account .. I picked up David and his wife Olivia and Hurricane Sandy and we started our drive to Sacramento around 9:30 AM in the morning. We reached at the perfect time of noon and proceeded to have our lunch at Tasty Thai .. the food was good but the tables were very very tacky , even more than my Hurricane 3 Provincial .. .so I used my napkin to create a barrier between the table and my wallet while I was eating ... nevertheless after enjoying some tasty food we made our way to the club, my old worn out eyePhone created some unwelcome diversions with quirky directions on the google maps but we finally reached the club around 1:15.
Tried to start warming up , and after the long drive the muscles were so stiff the ball was flying off my paddle .. it took me a while to adjust ... The tournament referee and the umpires read out the code of conduct and rules .. none of which people proceeded to follow btw .. but still when you are in rome ...
First up was our group matches , we played 4 teams in our group ... and as is the custom in most chinese clubs, they generally create two groups, one for home teams and one for stronger teams coming from outside so that their teams can qualify and get beaten up in semis ... I have been noticing this in Swan CLC and the same thing happened at Caltt as well.. I am not judging .. they are the organizers and they can do what they want .. we are there to play ..
We went through some tough times but other than the one loss we won 3-1 in terms of team matches in the group and made it to Semis , the semi final was a breeze .. we played the top team of the other group and won 3-0. If you are following .. you can understand what I was saying earlier .. .anyways the only loss we had was 0-3 in terms of individual matches .. which was a little scary ... nevertheless ... we faced the same team in the finals ...
some background built up before the finals ... the team we are facing was the one we lost 0-3 in the group .. .it had two strong Loopers ... around 2000 level who are pretty accustomed to William and George in our team .... the other two guys in their team were willy old street fighters .. one around late 50s with a dead rubber ( probably 20 years old and I am not kidding ) and shouts during points when you are just about to hit, and the other one was a mean sly dude who was upto all kind of dirty tricks ... serving without tossing , fighting on every point .. and what not ... William and I already had run in s with these guys during the group match , protesting against their tricks .. but to no avail ...
The other thing that had happened was even though we had finished our matches before 8pm , the semi finals could not start before 9:30 because of delays in the other group and by now the organizers decided to have all matches to best of 3 instead of best of 5.
So we proceeded to play the finals ...
First up was George who played their best guy .. fought and lost .. they guy is a very stead looper on both wings .. somebody who knows how to play long pips and definitely had the measure of how to play George yesterday ...
Second up was william and i against the wily dudes .. we proceeded to take our revenge on them defeating them 2 and 0 . William and I played well in patches but as a team was out of their league by a margin since both of us are better equipped to handle junk balls ... ..
Third match Was David vs their other looper and David was not able to play his best level ... so lost the match 0-2 .
the fourth match was the doubles , David and Sandy vs their two loopers
william had started playing the fifth singles in parallel. He mopped up the floor with the old rubber guy ...
by now all eyes were on the doubles match , since it had become the decider.
David and sandy lost the first game 7-11 . It was mostly unforced errors here are there. during the break we planned to cut down the unforced errors and were able to get back in the second game 11-8
. So it was going down to the wire .. nerves were frayed and people were cheering both teams on ...
I could hear people whispering .. these guys are good ( David and Sandy ) because they had just stolen the second game of the match from under the nose of two of the best players in their club . Meanwhile the third game started and the opponents went ahead 4-1 when I called time out to stop their momentum ... we talked during the time out on how to cut down the errors in serve receive , first make the third ball and start counter looping from there on .. Sand and David are both very good counter loopers , Sandy is consistent , and David powerful !
The time out worked wonders , we went on to win the next few points and was ahead 9-6 when the other team called time out. We discussed how we were doing well , and plan to keep the momentum going ...
from then on it was their time to stage a come back ... 9-9 and then eventually 10-9 to have a match point .. we were able to defend the match point successfully but lost in the deuce advantage 10-12 ...
But it was brave effort by all of us ... we all played above our level considering the conditions we are in .. Sandy having moved to Redwood city and not playing doubles regularly , David busy with work and me being really rusty with not having played matches ( singles and doubles ) regularly for a quite a while now ...
but what was more important was ... we had a ton of fun !!! So thanks to @Der_echte for organizing this ..
the prize for the tournament are two banquet tickets to China Day Celebration where the Councillor General ( or somebody ) from Chinese Consulate in San Francisco are going to present the trophies and certificates ...
we are hoping @Der_Echte turns up in the banquet with his wife and collects the prizes on our behalf ... hopefully his wife will understand what an honor it is to serve with Der_echte in these troublemaking missions !!!
THREE CHEERS to TROUBLEMAKERS !! Salute to the Chief Trouble Maker ... Mr. William Waltrip ...
Made finals !!! got to deciding match !!! Our team up 9-6 in final game. Oh so close, but lost 9-11 after opponent's timeout.
ttmonster should give a firsthand account of the finals and tourney action.
It was a blast, we played above our levels and supported each other.
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