Hellhens in France!: Tourly

When you write about the matches you play every evening, as I've been doing with this blog, you begin to notice trends in your game (and in my case, trends in Frankie's game as well). And if I start a match by digging myself big holes early in sets one more time, some poor Frenchman is going to lose his head.

On the way to the club.

Today we traveled about 100 kilometers to the village of Tourly. It's a tiny town in some rural part of Northern France. Unlike yesterday when we traveled on a highway, today we traveled through the French countryside on roads so narrow two cars can barely fit. Gustavo had told us that the club was tricky to find as it was just two indoor courts in the middle of a corn field. He said, "It look like corn, wheat, corn, tennis, corn, wheat." And he really wasn't exaggerating. The club was actually located right behind a large corn field with absolutely nothing else around. Save for a small little lake that some guy was aggressively fishing.

The view of the club from the highway. Notice it is quite literally behind a corn field.

Frankie had decided he wasn't going to play because his elbow was bothering him a little (don't worry Richard and Wanda, he's fine) so I stepped in. Because it was a small tournament I started in the semi-finals and was facing the director of the Tourly Tennis Club in my first match. He was an older guy, probably about 45, and in the warmup he looked awful. Except for his serve. Despite not bending his knees and using a motion that resembled a fairy sprinkling pixie dust, he dropped bombs. It made no sense. Before I get into the match it's worth trying to convey just how French this guy was. In fact, after the match Frankie laughed for 30 minutes as he recounted all of the Frenchman's (as well as the French crowd's) antics. To start, when I looked down to bounce the ball before my serve he would slide his feet together, go up on his tippy toes, and twirl his racquet in front of his face before finally getting in a decently athletic position. He also texted every changeover and Frank said he was constantly receiving messages with excessive heart and kiss emoticons. And every time he missed a shot, he would do a full reconstruction of the stroke he had just erred on. Some people do a brief swing to try and mentally fix their error, but this guy would recreate the entire moment. Finally, apparently every time I called the score in French the French people next to Frank would mock my French accent. Which, given how poor my French accent probably is, is moderately acceptable.

Frankie lakeside near the club. Later, some older Frenchman was casting three fishing poles at once.

However, despite the director looking bad in the warmup, I wasn't looking to hot myself. I was a bit fatigued from the drive, and the court we were playing on was unlike anything I've ever played on. It was some sort of concrete topped with a fine layer of dust that caused every ball, and especially slices, to skid and never get much higher than your hips. And while on most surfaces the director of the club probably played like he warmed up, quite poorly. He had clearly been perfecting his indoor, concrete court tennis game for a number of years. He utilized the serve, slice, and sprint to net approach which, given that the ball stays so low to the ground, was pretty damn effective.

In the first set I immediately found myself down 3-0. I'm starting to think I should just give up the first three games of sets to save everyone the trouble of having to play them. The only plus side of getting down early so frequently, is I'm quite adept at getting back into sets. I battled back and managed to get the first set to 5-5, where I proceeded to play two poor games and lose the first 5-7. It was much like the match yesterday in that I was down big, came back, then once I'd evened the score, let it slip away. In the second set I came out sharp, had good focus, and was able to get into more of his service games and steal several breaks. In about half the time it had taken to complete the first set I'd evened the score one set a piece with a 6-2 win.

The club. There were just two courts inside this barn-like structure.

In the third set I brought out the shovel and went digging again. We traded holds to make it 1-2 when I gifted the Frenchman an easy break. He held serve and now held a fairly commanding 1-4 lead. But again, I'm pretty good at coming back. I managed to hold, break, and then hold again to even the match at 4-4. At this point about 20-30 people were watching our match, furiously clapping whenever the director won a point, and making just enough noise to not be insulting whenever I won a point. Frankie insists it wasn't true, but I'm fairly sure the crowd hated me for my antics throughout the match. Due to the nature of this old man's frustrating play I had been yelling 'Come on!' and 'God dammit!' all match, depending on whether or not I'd won the point. The Frenchman held to go to 5-4 and I then I played an excellent service game and held at love to make it 5-5. Again the Frenchman held, and again I played a solid game to take it to a tiebreak. In the tiebreak I jumped out to a 4-1 lead before hitting the stumbling blocks. He played a few solid points and I made a couple of errors and in an instant I was down 4-6. I saved one match point, but carelessly missed a forehand long on the next to lose 7-5, 2-6, 7-6(5). I was maddeningly frustrated after, but you win some and you lose some.

In the afternoon Frankie and I finally made it in to downtown Rouen when it was still light out, we've been there at night, where we wondered around the town and went inside the cathedral. I thought it was pretty cool but Mr. Frank was unimpressed and says there are much better cathedrals elsewhere. Our next tournament starts tomorrow in a town called Yvetot. Even though we're starting in the same round, I play at 17:30 while Frankie doesn't play until Tuesday. If Frankie and I were to win, we'd both play our second matches on Wednesday, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. We only have two nights left in the flat before we hit the road, but we're excited because we're both ready to get out of Rouen and check out the rest of this fine country.