Seriously Belated Ending

It's been about 3 months since we left France so one could call this post a little late and they would be correct in doing so. But I was re-reading some posts today and I realized I never really 'ended' the blog. So I'm ending it. Since leaving France Frank and I have both moved onto new tennis related activities, I'm the assistant men's coach at Middlebury College, and Frank is teaching lessons down in New Zealand. While he begins medical school in less than 6 months my future is unclear. Maybe one day I will return to France and give it another go, or maybe our wild ride through the French countryside will be my only attempt at 'pro' tennis. You just never know.

Billere: Day 2, 3, and More...

It's been a while. I get it. My blogging motivation has been waning. I'm not really sure why. But enough with the excuses, let's get to it. Last time I checked in with you guys we had just finished our first rounds of a tournament in Billere. The following day, I guess it was Friday, September the 6th, Frankie played his second round against a 4/6 teenager. This kid had upset the number one seed, who was a 1/6 older gentlemen, the day before so Frank was ready for a battle. As a spectator and follower of Frankie's game for the last several years I really only have one regret about this match. It's that no one else who has seen Frankie's game evolve over the last few years was there to watch it. Frankie was Roger Federer, or at least as close as he'll ever get to Roger. He absolutely obliterated this kid, I think it was 6-1, 6-2. The biggest difference in the last few weeks has been a change in his mindset. Most people who know Frankie know that he was supreme confidence in things he has absolutely having no business being confident in. His believe that he could complete an Ironman despite essentially no training for example. Yet for some reason he has been unable to muster this confidence in things he is quite good at, tennis for example. But in the last couple matches he's turned his swag on, if you will. 

Frankie and his very French chair umpire. The guy wore a scarf, peacoat, classy slacks, and had his legs crossed the entire match

His next match was against a kid we named 'The Turtle'. This wasn't a knock on his game, his speed, or anything of that variety. He simply moved and looked like a turtle. When he walked he would hunch over, thrust his head out in front of his shoulders, and waddle to the ball. In addition he had a bit of a belly, and thus his forward hunch gave the appearance he was sporting a shell. Despite this seemingly negative description of The Turtle's appearance he also possessed the largest forehand I have ever seen. It was outrageous. He would swing from his heels and bludgeon every single ball. For the pace he put on the ball he was also remarkably consistent. 

The Turtle balling.

In addition, despite his heavy frame, he managed to run around every single backhand and rope his Goliath forehand. The match started poorly as Frankie dropped the first 8 points. He then broke to get to 1-2 but dropped the next 4 games to lose the first set 1-6. He was playing absolutely great tennis but The Turtle was just unbelievable. The second set was more of the same with The Turtle grabbing the second set 6-2, and winning the match 6-1, 6-2. 

Frankie and The Turtle

There was one point of note early in the second when Frank and The Turtle traded 15 forehands that were all massive. After The Turtle left one a bit short Frank ripped a forehand up the line. The Turtle crawled over to the ball and hit a beautiful defensive lob. Frank sprinted forward, and in hit a sweet jumping overhead for an 120 MPH winner. It was one of those shots you hit when your messing around in practice and miss almost every time, but this time he hit it dead perfect. He turned and flashed me a sheepish grin, knowing he'd just played the best point of his young life. Despite the loss Frank collected a nice paycheck and was quite satisfied with his tournament. 

The winners and runner-ups of each division. As well the mayor of the city second from the left. 

The next few days we messed around in Biarritz playing some tennis and hitting the beach. While the routine is nice, it's starting to get a bit monotonous. Fortunately we have another tournament on Saturday, and then we will be heading up north for our last few tournaments. A few days ago, to break up the routine, we headed to Bordeaux to play a round of golf. 

Biarritz chilling.

The course was similar to many American courses with two distinct differences. First, because Bordeaux is famous wine country there were grapes being grown all around the course, which was quite cool. 

Notice the wine groves in the background...

....and again.

Second, there were several holes where the tee box was placed in a manner where one had to drive the ball across an active road to get to the hole. It was weird, cars would drive by, and you would simply wait for a break in the action before whacking the ball and hoping no car would come. Fortunately we avoided disaster, but it seems like a system with room for improvement. 

Some golf clips.

Cool hole. Right in front of the pond you'll notice two smaller beaver like creatures. 

He's very excited to golf!

That's all for now. I'll try to provide updates from the tournament this weekend, but I promise nothing. Although you do get your obligatory bonus pic taken in a French mall earlier today. 

Barack need's party too!

-Max

Billere: Day 1

I haven't taken a little heat from the higher ups for 'going dark' or not posting frequently enough recently. But I can assure you what I would've posted in the last few days is not worth reading. Not only is it rather boring to describe, it will probably also fill you with bits of jealously as our days consist of waking up, tennising, beaching, rinsing, and repeating. But today, finally, we did something! We had our first tournament in forever. And what a day back to tennis it was. 

Biarritz is quite nice...

...yea like really, really nice.

We made the 110 kilometer drive from our beachside heaven to the town of Pau. Frankie was first up on the docket at 17:00. He was playing a 4/6 man who appeared to be about 40. Normally I describe the matches just from memory, but I charted Frank's entire match today so today I can be a lot more specific. So for each game of the entire match I will pull out some interesting stats to try and give you a sense for how the match flowed. The comments below the game score are just what I think looking back at how points were won in that game while what is written after 'trend' is what I actually wrote while observing the match.  I would recommend scrolling down quite a bit unless you throughly enjoy the nuisances of tennis. Seriously this is multiple pages of far too detailed analysis. I would expect most people to scroll for a while. I even got bored writing it. But here goes:

Frank serving early in the match.

Warm up thoughts: First warm up rally extends 50+ balls. Should be an interesting match. Guy is a left with a weak backhand. Has tried to hide it all warmup. Let's see if Frank exploits it.

Max's keys to the match:

Frank

Patience

Attack with forehand

Finish at net

Other dude (I think his name was Pierre)

Extend points past Frank's comfort level

Hide backhand

0-0 Pierre serving to start match:

Server wins 4 straight points. Two winners and two unforced errors by young Frank

0-1 Frank serving:

Frank double faults to open the game, players trade 2 errors each before Frank doubles again to get broken. 

Trend: Poor start.

0-2 Pierre serving:

Pierre makes 6 forehand errors and gives back the break. 

Trend: Guy made 6 forehand errors but he hits it huge. Does Franke notice that despite the good look of the stroke his opponent is losing almost all his points off of it?

1-2 Frank serving:

2 more doubles combined with 2 winners from Pierre leads to another break.

Trend: Second double was a clear hook off of a let. French guys in front of me not happy. Frank does not question call.

1-3 Pierre serving:

3 more forehand errors from Pierre capped with a double, Frank breaks bad.

Trend: Good god how many forehand errors will his opponent make. Looks like Frank has started to notice…

2-3 Frank serving:

At 15-30 guy uncorks a forehand winner and Frank yells at himself to hit to his opponents backhand. At this point in the match the guy has 1 forehand winner to 10 errors. Frank loses the game on an error. 

This guy's khakis looked like they had been rolled in clay.

2-4 Pierre serving:

Missed return.

Aced.

Missed return.

Missed return.

Trend: Awful last game. Mind was stuck in previous game. His opponent swung his racquet 4 times and won 4 points. Unacceptable unless you're playing Isner.

2-5 Frank serving:

Frank finally picks up his serve and picks up 3 free points on service winners.

Trend: First serves make a difference…

3-5 Pierre serving:

Down 30-15 Frank runs around a second serve to gain no advantage and pays the price for it. Loses the set a point later on an ace.

3-6

2nd set: 0-0

0-0 Frank serving:

Had to run and get changed and come back to deuce. 

Frank starts to serve huge though and fights off 3 break points to grit out an early hold.

Trend: Sweet service game. That's how you do it!

1-0 Pierre serving:

Pierre hits 3 winners and holds easily.

1-1 Frank serving:

Frank goes down 0-30 and then serves his way back into the game and gets the hold

Trend: Great early hold after going down 0-30. I have a good feeling about this next return game. He's been very close the last few return games.

2-1 Pierre serving:

At 0-15 Frank hustles his butt off and makes the guy hit one more ball, a little sitter, which he misses to move the game to 15-15. Frank eventually breaks off several forehand errors from his opponent.

Trend: Won game cause he made all 6 service returns. Good work.

3-1 Frank serving:

Frank forces 3 return errors and wins 2 more serve and volley points. Great hold.

Trend: Just served out of a tree. Probably hit a few that touched mid 110s.

4-1 Pierre serving:

Despite his opponent making 6 of 7 first serves Frank makes 6 of 7 returns and breaks again. I think there's a theme here…

5-1 Frank serving:

A bad game for tennis as there were 11 unforced errors caped of by a double fault.

Trend: Frank had a set point but lost it. Biggest problem was 1st serve percentage fell a lot. And he got super pissed when he lost the game even though ball striking is fantastic right now. I don't understand his brain.

5-2 Pierre serving:

I noted two points Frank lost because of bad feet. He was getting a bit tight.

5-3 Frank serving:

Again serve saves him.

Trend: Ace out wide on set point. Welcome to the big show.

6-3

Third set 0-0 Pierre serving:

Frank makes 4 errors in five points.

Trend: Frank mutters that is the worst f#&%ing game. I agree

0-1 Frank serving:

Solid service game with multiple service winners. I noted he hit one close to 115 up to the T (my mental radar gun is always accurate). Solid hold.

1-1 Pierre serving:

Ugly game with tons of errors. Highlight was a 2 year-old girl threw a big bouncy red ball onto the court during Frank's break point. It was quite funny. 

The culprit.

1-2 Frank serving:

3 serve and volley attempts. 3 points won. Hold. He's won almost every point when's come to net (seriously, I only count 2 points lost at net up to this point)

2-2 Pierre serving:

Pierre hits 3 winners and holds.

Trend: Guy played great game and Frank is somehow livid with himself…of course.

2-3 Frank serving:

Serving and volleying comes back to hurt him as he loses two points early in the game and trails 15-40 before his opponent makes error after error to give him the hold.

Trend: Great hold down 15-40. Big firsts and smart plays after getting burned on two serve and volley plays where he served to the wrong side. 

3-3 Pierre serving:

Frank hits the best backhand I've ever seen him hit. On the run, down the line passing shot that is just a frozen rope. Breaks.

Trend: Service games where Frank makes a high volume of returns generally work out well. 

4-3 Frank serving: 

Back to the big serving routine. He wins 3 points just because of big serving. Holds.

After the match Frank said he was having conversations with Belletto during the 3rd set and that's what got him through it. He's a weird dude. 

5-3 Pierre serving:

I didn't have commentary because I was warming up but he breaks to win. Great match. 3-6, 6-3, 6-3. 

I'm not sure this is a good way to review a match. It certainly was irritating to write and I'll never do it again. But Frank played great and won his first match on clay as well as his first European 3 setter! Seems crazy, but since he started playing well we haven't been on much clay. He plays in the semis tomorrow at 17:30 (and he's guaranteed some cash).

Now to my match. I was playing a 3/6 15 year-old. He was very good. But he was also 15. For some reason I'm a bit nervous when I play younger kids who have good rankings as I expect them to be better than they are for some reason. Either way the first set went well enough and I won 6-3. The 2nd set I lost a bit of focus and found myself down 1-3.

Before I 'lost my cool'

We played a long point which ended when my opponent hit a lob that I thought sailed a little long. The kid, who glanced at his father all the time to silently determine whether or not his shots were in or out, apparently got a look that said his ball was in. So he walked to the net and asked me to show him the mark. I couldn't find it, and the tournament referee, who was actually just a 17 year-old kid, came and pointed at a mark right on the line. Now, I'm not 100% sure if the ball was in or out, but this was definitely not the mark. This mark was a good foot away from where the ball landed. After a few moments of calm I did what they call, 'flew off the handle'. I yelled at the referee until out of fear he decided a let would be acceptable. But the kids father would have none of this and declared the point was his sons. Now whatever portion of the handle I had initially retained, I quickly lost. I yelled at the father, at the referee, at my opponent. One could say I even handled the situation 'poorly'. I spent the next 8 games thinking about feasible ways I could shank a ball into my opponents father. Or less inconspicuously, if I could just sprint over and tackle him off of his chair. Every changeover I sat and glowered at him (while eating peanuts, I probably looked insane). 

Peanut glowering

Down 0-3 in the 3rd I finally let it go. It took 30 minutes, but finally I was able to play again. And I went on a 4 game stretch where I didn't miss a ball, and subsequently didn't lose a game. Up 4-3 I lost focus yet again and ended up losing 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. I had no business winning. You can't just go bananas, freak out, and expect to win. And I acted like an ass. But life goes on. 

To get a little sense of where my head was. This was my response to a missed serve rolling back into the court.

Now it's very late and I want to watch football. Until tomorrow. (Plus bonus pics)

We're slowly going crazy... 

...like actually...

...and I rest my case.

Oh yea, Biarritz is nice.

-Max

Flat Life: Round 2

I've been a little slow on the blog posts lately not due to lack of time or internet access, but due to lack of content. The last few days have been fantastic, but they've been quite simple. Generally we wake up at around 10:00, dillydally for a while, play tennis for 2 hours or so starting at 12:00. Then go to the beach from 14:00 to 18:00. It's quite pleasant and highly relaxing. After spending our first day or two in the Biarritz area at okay, but not great, beaches we've finally found an awesome beach. 

The 'new' beach. (Click on this picture)

Today the waves we're absolutely huge and it was actually a bit treacherous. To try and manage the force of the waves we bought some flippers and a children's boogie board while we were at a sports store getting our racquets strung. The flippers were effective. The boogie board however, snapped in two when Frankie was pile-driven into the sand by a large wave. Nonetheless, we both survived to see another day. 

Life guards on high-alert today. It doesn't look like it but waves were 6-8 feet high and the rip current was nasty.

As I mentioned in my last post we anticipated playing in our next tournament tomorrow, as that's when the director predicted we would play when we signed up for the tournament. However, she called me today and told me we wouldn't be playing until Thursday. What happened is that they likely received less entries than they had anticipated which pushed the day we played further towards the end of the tournament. This is no problem for us as we've found a nice club we can train at for only 10 euros a hit and the beach seems to be calling again tomorrow. 

We drove around for a while testing different beaches before we found the one pictured above. This one did not pass the test as you can probably tell my Frankie's body language. Cool picture though.

The only other thing to mention is we moved into our flat 2 days ago. It's in a great location, has everything we need, and is generally quite nice, but it is extremely, extremely small. On the internet it's advertised as 14 square meters, and I would be surprised if it was much larger than 14 square feet. Once you unfold the couch into the supposedly 'queen' bed you barely have move to room around the flat. It really doesn't matter too much as having a roof over our head and a semi-permanent residence is good enough for me. But certainly worth mentioning. 

We reside in apartment 2 of Residence Alphonse XIII.

The flat as seen from the hallway.

Our very French landlord fixing our shower. 

No caption needed.

-Max

Back to Work

Yesterday we got in a legitimate practice for the first time in at least 10 days, and we'll have 4 more in the ensuing days until we play our next tournament on September 3rd in the city of Pau. It was great to get back out on the court and just hit balls. And since we continue to just play outstanding tennis on the practice court we have no problem staying out there for over 2 hours. We also did some doubles drills for the first time in forever and it made me a bit nostalgic for the game. I'm more determined than ever to find a competitive doubles tournament for us to play in. After the morning hit we went into the city of Biarritz, our campground is about 10 kilometers west of the city in a town called Bayonne, and tried to go the beach. The first beach we found was the tourist beach and it was not pleasant. It was beautiful, of course, but was riddled with people and the water was filthy.

Beach very pretty. Beach also too crowded.

Everyone we've been in the last 2 weeks the water has been some of the more pristine ocean water I've ever swam in. But this beach was in a little cove and because there was no escape for the water, trash was literally floating around. It was unfortunate. We quickly left and found a less crowded, much nicer beach closer to our campsite. Today we finally get to move into our flat so that should be quite nice. It's in the city of Biarritz and supposedly 200 meters from the beach. Hopefully not the trash beach, but either way having a permanent residence for two weeks will be fantastic. Not much else to report.

Frankie toning his precious calves. 

-Max

The Taste of Tomato

We made the 7 hour drive from Hendaye, France to Bunol, Spain on August 27th. I was very surprised that when we crossed from France to Spain there was no customs or passport control. We simply crossed a bridge and we were in Spain. It turns out that there are 26 European countries who have ratified the Schengen agreement which allows residents (and visitors) to freely pass from one country to the next with any sort of customs. Similar to how a resident of the United States freely passes from one state to another. Pretty cool. 

We drove through the Pyrenees to get to Bunol. No one ever told me the Pyrenees are freaking beautiful. 

With little difficulty we found our campsite and were a bit surprised that the campground was almost empty. There were a few tents, but at most it was only at 10% capacity. As the night went on it filled up more and more, but never reached more than 25% full. I suppose this was because they set up the campground in anticipation of a crowd as large as last years, which was 50,000 people. However for safety reasons the city of Bunol only sold 20,000 tickets, so there were far fewer people. After wandering around the city for sometime we headed back to our campsite to go to bed. 

Local residents protecting their homes from the upcoming onslaught. 

You'll notice 2nd story windows are covered with plastic and 1st story windows with wooden boards.

However, on our way to our tent we waved hello to a group of people that were sitting in a circle and having a few beers. Within a few minutes we had joined them with beers of our own and for several hours we chatted with folks from Venezuela, Canada, Ukraine, Netherlands, and of course Spain. It's also worth noting that it didn't matter when we wanted to go to sleep, it was impossible because less than 100 meters from our campsite there was a 24 hour dance party with techno music so loud it rattled your insides. The music played until 7:00 AM and then finally stopped. We looked about 10 times and not once did we see a single person at the dance party, it was there simply to prevent us from sleeping.

Our Tomatina friends.

Despite the dance party I think I got an hour or two of sleep before waking up at 8:00 A.M. to start adequately preparing for the festival, which was to kick of at 10:00. If you are wondering how a tomato festival with 20,000 people and 40 metric tons of tomatoes kicks off you have asked a fantastic question. At 10:00 a 15 to 20 foot pole that has been throughly greased is opened up to the public. Atop the pole is a ham. For the festival to truly begin someone must climb the pole and retrieve the ham. Watching scores of wildly intoxicated people attempt to scale a massive greased pole is quite entertaining. Whenever someone got near the top the crowd with roar with anticipation only to see them go tumbling to the ground. I can't imagine how difficult it was because even getting near the pole would've been a feat. The bottom of the pole was simply a pile of bodies with people trying to claw their way to the top. Despite two people getting their hands on the ham, no one got the ham off of the top of the pole, but after an hour the tomato trucks started to role through anyway. 

The ham pole. (Not my picture)

Truck after truck inched their way through the packed city streets with local residents atop them firing tomatoes at the crowd. After this the festival is essentially just an hour of picking tomatoes off of the ground and off of people and throwing them at whoever you can see. By the end you are caked in tomato and it's quite disgusting. It's worth noting that the day before the festival Frankie had wisely purchased a pair of goggles, which I endlessly made fun of him for, but it turns out this was quite wise and the norm. I got so much tomato juice in my eyes and had to be careful to avoid being pelted in the face to save ye' olde vision. 

The festival. Also not my picture but a solid representation of what took place. And this should provide an explanation as to why I didn't bring a camera in to take pictures of my own.

After the festival we made our back to our campsite to shower. Of course because everyone in the town was trying to shower at the same time there was no running water. So instead we dove in a highly suspicious lake just to try and get some of the juice off of us. We then made our way to a Chinese restaurant, the only thing that was open, and feasted. I say feasted because it was already 14:00 and the only thing we had consumed all day was beer and win. 

Frank took a brief nap in the Chinese restaurant. He'd obviously exerted too much energy in the tomato fight. 

We went to bed nice and early and awoke this morning to an eerily abandoned town. I guess everyone leaves right after the festival and we were some of the only tourists left in the town of Bunol, which save for the festival, is a pretty crappy town. We then made the 7 hour drive back to Biarritz where we found a campsite and pitched our handy dandy tent. We'll be in Biarritz for some time as we've decided to rent a flat and just play tournaments in the area for the next two weeks. Since it's almost September the country wide 'holiday' is over and flats our dirt cheap. We got something close to the beach for less than 30 euros a night. Can't beat that. We play our next tournament on the 3rd in a town called Pau, about 100 kilometers from here. Tomorrow we start training again to shake off some of the rust, and possibly sweat some more tomato juice out of the pours. 

Tomatina rules and regulations.

-Max

Hendaye: Day 2

The power of the mental game in tennis never ceases to amaze me. The difference between very focused Max and very unfocused Max is quite vast. Focused Max is quite good, can brush off bad points with ease, and believes he can beat anyone. Unfocused Max has a running dialogue in his head about how awful he, in turn plays quite awful, is and can lose to anyone. Yesterday unfocused Max came to play.

It started before the match where my concentration was not on my opponent, but on my wrist. I've recently run out of Johnson & Johnson athletic tape that I brought from home. A good tape job with J&J tape is the difference between feeling no pain in my wrist during a match and feeling a great deal of pain.  They don't sell J&J tape over here, or really athletic tape of any kind, so I've had to use a variety of tapes from the pharmacies. They are vastly inferior to J&J and I haven't found a good combination yet. During warm up every backhand I hit is agony, it feels like I'm being stabbed in the wrist. Not only am I not thinking about winning, I'm not even thinking about tennis, I'm just thinking about what I can do to stop this pain. The answer is a combination of a couple of Advil and scores of wrist circles to get the muscles to loosen up and relax. But this is not a grade A answer, it's a C+ answer at best. And I know that I'm going to have to play this whole match with a mild throbbing in my godforsaken left arm. 

We start off trading 3 service breaks to make the score 2-1 in favor of my opponent. Then I squander a 0-40 lead in the next game and before I know I'm down 4-1. The margin in tennis is so slim in this respect. Here I was a simple point away from evening the score at 2-2 and 2 minutes later I'm down 4-1. And this is all I can think about. Not the point I'm playing, not the game I'm playing, but how in the world I missed that sitter volley at 0-40. I'm still thinking about it 4 games later when I concede the first set 1-6. 

During my match I spent much more time thinking about the lovely Hendaye beaches than hitting the tennis ball.

Now my opponent is a 2/6 Spaniard who plays quite well, but I'm making him look great. If I can just get a few more balls in the court he'll come back down to earth, but I can't focus. Not for 5 shots, hardly for 3. I'm quickly down 0-3 in the second. Now I have a monumental deficit to overcome so I try and decrease the scope of the task at hand. "Just 1 game Max. Just win 1 game. If you win 1 game at least you won't lose 0-6 and be embarrassed. Just 1 game." I win the game. But I only asked my mind for 1 game, so that's all it gives. I quickly shed the next two . Now it's 1-5. My opponent tries to win the next game with flash and makes 4 quick errors to make it 5-2 but he quickly buckles back down and ends the match with an ace. I lose 1-6, 2-6 to an opponent who was good, but oh so beatable. 

Cool hotel overlooking the beach. 

Fortunately the town we're in is a beautiful beach town so right after my match Frankie and I walk to the beach, rent some surfboards, and lounge in the sand all afternoon. The depressing after effects of losing ebb away quite fast paddling into perfect waves. We're headed down to the beach again today and then tomorrow we had to Bunol to try and find the campground we have a reservation at.  The campground is apparently in the park right next to where the tomato festival is taking place. But it's hard to really know because the Spaniards aren't as into their camping as the French so their websites are awful and very confusing. In fact I only found the campground on some obscure 'La Tomatina' discussion forum and haphazardly e-mailed the guy last night in hope of a reservation. Despite their being 20,000 people expected at the festival the campground still had openings because it's nearly impossible to even figure out they have a campground in the city. I just got very lucky. I'll try to post tomorrow but if not it probably won't be until post-festival. Wish us luck.

Frank getting his surf on. 

A quick aside, and I've said this before, if you visit France and want to see more of the country than just Paris (which you should, Paris is nice but has been our least favorite city) you HAVE to come to the southwest corner of the country. It is a little slice of heaven down here. Beautiful beaches, perfect waves, and great weather, not much more you can ask for. 

This morning there was even a rainbow and you could see the end! (Excuse my finger)

-Max