Party Time!

We learned a fun little trick for speaking French last night while enjoying some wine and cheese with Gustavo, Gustavo's friend Gustavo (confusing I know), his girlfriend Attica, and Fercho (our favorite!). You see, Spanish speaking players always come to Gustavo's tennis camp and want to learn how to speak French, or at least how to say that they don't speak French. Instead of actually teaching them words and grammar Gustavo just says, "What you need to say is 'I don't buy bread' in Spanish, and say it very quickly. Translated thats, "Yo no compro pan." If you say this very quickly and with a French accent, it sounds quite similar to "Je ne comprends pas," French for 'I do not understand.' Try it yourself, it works quite well.

Me playing yesterday against Julian.

Anywho, tonight we finally get to hit the town! That is of course because I got steamrolled in my match today and we finally have a free night. But only one, as we play in our next tournament on Monday. The tournaments never stop here. I woke up at 10:15, realized our clothes dryer does not work at all, it doesn't actually spin the clothes around so only the clothes that are on the very top get dry, everything else stays quite wet, so I had to scramble to find some clothing that was neither filthy nor dripping wet. Frankie got to sleep in because there wasn't enough room for him in the first car to Nuefchatel. I drove with Gustavo, Fercho, Gregario, and Daniel (my opponent) and arrived in Nuefchatel around 11:30 for our 12:00 match. Daniel had been nursing an injured ankle, but in typical South American fashion he seemed to have been being a bit dramatic as he was flying around the court all match. The match started well enough for me with both of us trading service holds until 2-2, when Daniel broke me and then caught fire. It seemed no matter where I hit the ball, Daniel would scamper to it, line up a forehand, a rope a winner. He took the first set 6-2, it wasn't an absolute blowout, but it wasn't all that close either. When the second set began I made some adjustments and tried to stay a bit closer to the baseline and do everything possible to play the ball to his much weaker backhand. Unfortunately he was just too experienced on clay and won the second set with relative easy, 6-1.

Strange Tintin art in our lunch host's home.

Despite the schlacking I learned two very important things today. First, returning serve on clay is much different than returning serve on hard courts. While I'd had no problems returning in my two previous matches, I hadn't faced any big servers. Daniel served quite well, and in my typical fashion I tried to catch the ball early, a few feet inside the baseline. However, every game I was giving away 2-3 free points on missed returns. Down 4-1 in the second set I looked around and noticed all the other players were returning serve from about 5 feet behind the baseline. The reason for this twofold. First, serves on clay often take wicked bounces, so trying to catch it early is very tricky. Second, no one really serves and volleys so taking the return early isn't all that advantageous, instead getting the return deep is very important. Which leads me to my second point. You have to, and I mean HAVE to, hit the ball past the service line. When the ball bounces on the clay it slows down so much that any ball hit in front of the service is any easy winner for any talented player, as Daniel showed me time and time again today. I certainly got my ass kicked, but I learned some valuable lessons and I think I'd have a very good chance if I were to play him again.

After the match I was very fortunate to get to go lunch with the gang (minus Frankie, who presumably was still sleeping. He's always sleeping, he's sleeping right now. Although in his defense he claims he went on a long jog while I was playing). Gustavo knew a French lady who lived very close to the courts and she had invited us all to lunch. I arrived at her beautiful home to see quite the spread laid out on a picnic table under some trees. She had prepared a feast of pasta, meatballs, some sort of delicious rice dish, fruit salad, and of course five different kinds of cheese with accompanying baguettes. After stuffing ourselves full she brought out strawberries picked fresh from her garden, with homemade creme, and coffee. It was by far the best meal I've had in France so far. We returned from lunch and Frank had finally made his way to the courts with another group of kids. We watched tennis for about an hour before returning to our flat.

We ate at a picnic table under some trees. It was awesome.

This picture really doesn't do the house justice, it was beautiful. I really should make a conscious effort to take better photos of nice things.

The man. The myth. The legend. Fercho.

Its about 21:00 right now and apparently there's an awesome light show projected on the cathedral at about 22:45 so we're headed into town with Fercho, Gustavo, and Romaro (another coach) in an hour or so to see the show and hit the town. Just a quick aside about Fercho, because he is quite the person. He's a 39 year-old Columbian who is Daniel's personal coach. Daniel says he's known Fercho since birth and he's like a second father to him. Fercho's English and French are not very good so we communicate mostly in Spanish, but he is just hilarious. He laughs constantly and tells hilarious stories. Today he could not get over how the rather large French guy we had lunch with kept turning food down when it was offered to him, only to immediately grab a plateful when it was set on the table. For about 30 minutes after lunch Fercho would wiggle his index finger back and forth and proclaim in awful English, "He not sneaky!" I'm quite excited to go out with him as it will certainly be an experience.

Au revoir,

-Max