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

The 5 P's and the Tennis Gods

The 5 P's. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Parents tell their kids a lot of things. Some things stick, most do not. I'm not sure if there's a correlation between importance of message and likelihood of said message sticking, but for some reason this message stuck. My father used to say it to me, and his father to him. And since I hate not being prepared I tend to abide by this guideline. Today I did not prepare well and as the guideline dictates I performed poorly. Frankie, being the enigma that he is, prepared poorly and performed fantastically. 

Tennis Gods. Anyone who has played a decent amount of tennis knows that there are tennis gods and that they enjoy human suffering. Today they must've been howling in delight. There were so many highs and then so many lows. But as the tennis gods dictate you generally finish even par, a few strokes up on a good day, or a few strokes down on a bad day, and today was no different. 

The club. It has 9 clay courts and is quite nice. 

With today's themes now laid out I'll try to fill in the rest of the story. After a morning of very little activity we arrived at the tennis club about 30 minutes before my match. Now one of the things that has been really beneficial to my tennis, and especially beneficial to my tennis early in sets, has been getting a good warm up before matches. It's hard to actually find a court, but just jogging around for 15-20 minutes before a match and getting loose really has payed off. But as you should know by now I did not prepare well. So I did not warm up today. I was feeling lazy and even though the warm up helps a lot, I hate doing it. As we hit the first balls of warm up things were not looking good. Having not played for a few days was causing problems and I felt like a was playing tennis on a ship. I was bobbing up and down and actually fell over hitting one of my first backhands. After 5 minutes of groundstrokes I came to net and hit a few volleys. After I was satisfied I asked for a few overheads. My first overhead is a tremendous shank and I hear a sound that resembles a string breaking, but I immediately knew this was worse. I looked down and my frame had cracked right at the throat, just completely destroyed. Now you may recall from my earlier post (if you're a frequent reader that is) that this was the only racket I had, so now I'm racquet-less. Frankie runs and grabs one of his racquets and I begin my match with a frame I've never played with before. I guess you can file this under being both poorly prepared and the tennis gods smiting me. 

The pre-match coin-flip. Or in our case racquet-spin. Notice I have Frankie's racquet.

As I begin my match I'm not nervous because I know I'm going to lose. In fact, I know it won't even be close. But after 3 games I'm up 3-0. Not because I'm playing well but because I'm playing the dumbest tennis player in the history of tennis. He's a 16 year-old French kid ranked 4/6. His game is absolutely beautiful, huge forehand, great backhand, and just a monster serve. But he insists on hitting every ball as hard as he can. It's either winner or error, and he makes many more errors than winners. Within 20 minutes I've won the first set 6-2 and I'm thanking the tennis gods that I'm matched up against this kid. In the second set my focus is awful, as it has been all match, and the kid takes a 4-1 lead. He's not playing significantly better but my 12 year-old self would've roasted me. After contemplating how badly I don't want to play a 3rd set I beg my mind for 30 minutes of focus and for some reason it obliges. I win 6 of the next 7 games and win 6-2, 7-5. 

The only functioning stroke I had today was a serve.

Just after I get off Frankie goes on court. Right as he goes on the #1 55 year-old in France goes on next to him. Now this guy is absolutely filthy. I kid you not I watched him hit 3 drop shots that went at least 15 feet in the air before bouncing on his opponents side, and then jumping the net back onto his side. Every time he did this he giggled like a school girl and tipped his hat. I would kill for this guy's craft.

Despite Frankie's equally poor preparation Frankie comes out on fire. He's not just playing well, he's playing the best I've ever seen him play. He's hitting a world-class forehand and never missing. After a back and forth battle in the first set he breaks and wins it 7-5. In the second set he's playing even better than the first. He's up 5-1 in 20 minutes and he's made 3 unforced errors, I counted. 3 errors on clay in 6 games is legitimately world class. But the damn tennis gods. Just before losing a game to make the score 5-2 he breaks his second string of the day. Now he's out of racquets. I had one of mine strung in the mean time and now he's using it. This is what you want. Pivotal moment of a match and you have to play with a racquet that is radically different than the one you've been dominating with. Combine this with a substantial increase in play from his opponent and he drops the second set 5-7. 

Now that's a forehand swing.

The third set is a war. The first game lasts 18 minutes, I timed it. I've never seen anything like it. Frankie told me after the match that he knew he was going to lose the first game, but he just wanted to keep it close. He has mental problems. After a back and forth battle Frankie somehow has a match point up 6-5, 30-40. He plays solid, but not the aggressive manner that has been winning him points. He loses the point. A point later he has match point number two, and the same thing happens. A few points later he misses a backhand by a millimeter and loses the game. After a poor breaker he drops the match 6-5, 5-7, 7-6 (1). The damn tennis gods. The same day he plays the best tennis of his life, he loses a nail-bitter in which he has match points. 

Serving bombs. Well sort of. It's hard to really serve bombs on the clay.

I play tomorrow at 10:30 in the morning. I pray it's not against the old guy because I would be too starstruck to have a chance. I'll report back in the morning. 

-Max

Back On The Grind

Sorry for the my blogging absence but the last few days have been a whirlwind. We've registered about 1,000 KM in the car, been to two awesome concerts, and have found possibly the coolest part of France. But before I let you in on our new found secret, I'll start where I left off, in Paris. After my first day in Paris I realized I may have passed judgement too soon. I like Paris, it's history and architecture is amazing, it's certainly not my favorite part of France, but it's still very cool. 

Frankie always like jumping in front of the camera when I'm trying to take a picture. So to get even I'll post this moderately embarrassing picture that come from this practice. 

We began our second day in Paris by playing tennis in the Luxembourg Park, which if you're familiar with Paris, is basically right downtown. You wouldn't think it would be possible to play in downtown Paris but for only 8 euros my dream became a reality. There are 6 courts and most of the people playing are recreational hacks, so when Frank and I started hitting a small crowd of 15-20 people gathered to watch us. It continues to amaze me how much people love tennis here. As we were walking back to the flat after the hit I noticed a huge plume of smoke off in the distance. It was a bit concerning at first, but eventually we learned an old hotel that was being renovated had caught fire. A big fire, but no injuries or anything so it was okay. We spent the rest of the day walking down Champs-Elysees, seeing Arc de Triomphe, and a few other sites. 

2 of the 6 courts in Luxembourg Park. 

I was the only one who even seemed to notice the smoke.

Except for the pigeon. He was outta there.

Ridiculous Lamborghini a couple of Saudi Arabians got out of one Champs-Elysees. 

The Louvre. 

That evening we met up with 2013 Pitzer graduate Caroline Spurgin, her Alaskan friend, as well as a collection of Australians, Italians, and English. We drank a good deal of wine in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral and had a pretty fun time. The only unfortunate thing is that because everything in Paris is so expensive, that's pretty much all you can do nightlife wise without dropping 30+ euros. 

From left to right Jesse (PZ' 13), Julian (CMC 12) and Frank (PO' 13). Now that's some 5C diversity. 

Jesse working on his Faxe. This is a bizarre beverage. 

The next day we said our goodbyes to Julian and Jesse and moved to Saint-Denis, another part of Paris a bit north of the touristy area. The reason, of course, is because we were going to see Eminem that evening and wanted to stay close to the concert venue. He performed in Stade de France, which is the Stadium France constructed for the 1998 World Cup, and it's really something to see. We took the metro to the concert and when we arrived I was shocked at how many people were there. The stadium was completely full, except for the areas behind the stage where they had removed seats, and there must've been at least 50,000 people in attendance. We had seats in the 'pelouse' which was basically just open standing room on the ground level of the stadium. Eminem absolutely killed it, he played a set that was over 2 hours long and of course played all of his classic songs. I wasn't entirely thrilled about my time in Paris, especially because it cost so much just to be there, but seeing Eminem absolutely made it worth it.

Frank if you continue to jump in front of my pictures this is how I will make you pay.
That's Stade de France in the background.

No good pictures of Eminem or the crowd during the concert. But this was 10 minutes after it ended and still this many people.

The next morning we were awoken at 5 A.M. by the fire alarm. False alarm. Of course. After a few more hours of joyous sleep we started the 10 hour drive southwest to the town of Hossegor. Hossegor is one of the most famous surf towns in the world so we were excited for what was in store for us. Now during the course of the drive there was a rather large elephant in the room, or car, whatever. We knew we weren't going to arrive until around 23:00. At this time no camp grounds would be open and hotels were out of the question because we'd just spent so much money in Paris, so our sleeping situation was precarious to say the least. When we finally arrived we just drove to the beach to try and figure out what we were going to do. Keep in mind, we'd heard that Hossegor was a big party town but what we arrived to was still unexpected. When we parked we heard thumping bass not to far away. We grabbed a bottle of wine and started to meander in the direction of the music, because why not? It seemed better than our alternative option of continuing to sit in the car. What we stumbled upon was a wild party in a huge square right on the beach. There was a great DJ and at least 1,000 people dancing up a storm. We quickly joined in and danced the night away until 2:00 when the music stopped. Then we proceeded to find a nice nook on the beach and slept until about 7:00. Since we have a tournament today (in a few hours in fact) throughout the night we repeatedly assured ourselves that professional tennis players probably participate in similar activities the night before a match. 

Hossegor beach party.

So now we are in Hendaye (close to Hen Day, meaning it's got to be the Hen's day) where we are set to play our first rounds of another tournament, this will be my 12th (Frankie's 11th) tournament in just over 40 days. A quick aside, Hossegor and Hendaye are both in the southwest corner of France and are absolutely beautiful as well as tons of fun. If you ever visit France, you have to check out this part of the country. This tournament is 'open', meaning people of all rankings can enter, so it's unclear where exactly we are in the draw, but certainly not near the finals. I play at 14:00 while Frankie plays at 15:30. Finally we're not in the same bracket so unless we make it to the finals, which in an open tournament is a big unless, we won't be playing each other. This tournament is also back on the red clay, our first time playing on the dirt in over two weeks, so we're both pretty excited. Our only concern is our lack of strung rackets. I have 1 and Frankie has 2. Although he's been switching off between them for quite some time so he's unsure when they are going to break. Me thinks we need to find a stringer. I'll have good internet for a few days so I'll report back later tonight on how the tennis goes.

Because it's difficult to eat healthy without a place to cook or refrigerate we haven't been doing a fantastic job. To remedy this Frankie has a new daily ritual of eating an entire tomato. Here he selects his next victim. 

-Max 

Paris Overrated?

Don't get me wrong I like Paris. It's a nice city with lots of historic sites to see. But I'm not going to lie, I've enjoyed the rest of France much more than Paris. I don't like the crowds. I don't like the tourists that wonder around and act like fools. I don't like the ridiculously overpriced everything. And I really don't like trying to be hustled into every store and restaurant I walk by. I'm certainly happy we came here for a few days because the Eiffel Tower is amazing, Notre Dame Cathedral is crazy, Champ Eylysses is historic, and tomorrow I'm sure The Louvre will be awe inspiring. But I guess I prefer being less of a tourist than everyone else. Any who we had planned to go The Louvre today but we couldn't because it's closed on Tuesdays, of course, so we called an audible and went to Rolland Garros, the site of the French Open.

Entering the museum. 

Every French Open since the beginning.

Unfortunately you can't really go into the tournament grounds and see the courts, but there is a museum on site that we went to. Because we are members of the French Tennis Federation it was only 3 euros which was quite a steal, and it was a damn cool museum. What made it even cooler was we yesterday as we were driving to Paris we got to the part of Open, Andre Agassi's autobiography, were he finally wins the French Open in 1999. And there is a whole section of the museum that's dedicated to his win, so the after hearing what he had to say about the match, we got to watch highlights and then see his racquet, clothes, and trophy from the match which was a great connection to make. Afterwards we wondered the streets, got some lunch, and relaxed in a park. 

From left to right. Men's Doubles trophy, Men's Singles trophy, Women's Singles trophy, and Women's Doubles trophy.

The first ball machine invented by Rene Lacoste, the founder of Lacoste. Turns out the alligator is the Lacoste logo because Rene was nicknamed the alligator for his on court tenacity. 

Tennis evolved from a variation of paddle tennis where the paddle was strapped to one's hand. But Major Walter Wingfield thought this was dumb, and instead developed the first racquets. 

The museum also highlighted how far tennis has come in just a few decades. The guys that won the French Open in the 30s, 40s, and 50s looked like unathletic hacks. Compare that to the physical specimens that modern day players are and it really gives you an idea how great of an era of tennis we're living in. As I mentioned earlier tomorrow we're going to go The Louvre and hopefully find some reasonably priced tennis courts in the area to hit a few balls. And then on the 22nd it's Eminem. We bought our tickets last night and I'm pretty excited. Should be something to see an American rap icon play in Paris. 

For example how did Jaroslvav Drobny win the French Open twice? He looks overweight and is rocking shades and a beret....

...Fred Perry looks like he can barely stay on his feet and Gottfried is dressed for dinner, not tennis.

Compare that to modern day athletes who look like freaking beasts. 

The evolution of the tennis shoe. Far let is Tsonga's, middle is Stan Smith's, and far right is the original tennis shoe. 

Evolution of the racquet. 

-Max

Ainey-le-Chateau: Day 2 and more...

During our long drives throughout the small highways of France we've been listening to Andre Agassi's autobiography entitled Open on audiobook. We recently listened to a section where Brad Gilbert, Andre's coach during his 20s, says that over the course of a year there are 5 days where Andre will wake up and he will be unbeatable. In his case he is obviously talking about tennis, but I think it applies to any task in which one excels. The other 360 days you don't have your best game, but if you are patient and smart you can still function at a high level. Yesterday, was without a doubt one of the latter days. In fact, yesterday was probably one of my worst 5 days of the year.

The pool at what has been our awesome campsite for the last 3 days.

It all started with my semi-final matchup. I was playing Frankie. This was the third time we've played each other in as many tournaments, and unless we both make it to the finals of some difficult tournament, this will be the last. At least as far as I'm concerned. I would rather default than face the prospect of playing Frankie again. There are many terrible things about playing against Frankie that didn't really come to light in our first match, began to rear their ugly head in the second, and were wildly evident in the third. First, we are both super competitive and want to win. Obviously when we play each other someone has to lose and is generally a bit unhappy the rest of the day. Second, and I assume Frank feels a similar way, beyond my desire for personal success I really enjoy watching Frankie play well and win. But when I play people my goal is to make them miserable. Clearly these goals conflict with one another. Finally, what I hate watching is when Frankie gets frustrated. Again, I play my game with the intention of trying to make my opponent want to quit tennis. And again, we have conflicting desires.

The trophy presentation being set up. 

As the match began things looked bad. We were both playing poorly and frustration levels rose quickly. On serve 2-3 in the first set we sat down on the changeover, exchanged glances, and both muttered something about how miserable this was. As the set continued both of us badly wanted a quick end to this painful affair, but as the the tennis gods would have it, every single game went to deuce. It seemed like we were both trying to lose just to end this god awful match as quick as possible, but it's hard to lose on purpose. And so every game, and I mean every game went into a never ending cycle of deuce. I finally won the first set 7-5 and hoped, no I prayed, for a quick second set just because we were both so miserable. We were so miserable that people stopped watching our match, the first time people have stopped watching either of us play during our time in France, because it was so evident that we were suffering badly. The locals thought we were hungover from the night before, but that was far from the truth, we just hated being pitted against one another. You can't fight a war, which in many respects is what a tennis match is, against your best friend. 

In the second set we suffered a similar fate. Deuce. Ad-In. Deuce. Ad-In. Deuce. Ad-Out. Deuce. Ad-In. I was so close to just retiring and saying my wrist hurt too bad to continue because of the misery. The only other time I've enjoyed my time less on a tennis court was during Frankie and I's doubles match at the NCAA Individual Championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan earlier this year, and that was only because my injury wasn't letting us perform at the level I knew we could. Eventually at 5-4, 30-40 I had a match point and was thanking the man upstairs this was over. But it's not easy to lose on purpose and Frank somehow scrapped out the next two games to take a 6-5 lead. If this was going 3 sets, I was going to quit. I hate quitting so, so much. But I would've gladly quit to end this match. But I held serve and we went to a tiebreak which I won 7-3. A 7-5, 7-6(3) victory that lasted well over 2 hours. 

We immediately left the club and it took several hours before we were able to laugh about what had just occurred. At 16:30 I played in the finals against an older 3/6. My morning match depression quickly found it's footing in my head and I couldn't hit a ball in the court. I looked like I'd picked up tennis a few weeks ago and only competed recreationally. Fortunately for me my opponent had gassed himself in his morning match and couldn't understand how I was shanking so many balls yet still beating him. After I won a 7-5 first set, in which he'd had a set point, I cruised through the second 6-2 after he all but gave up. I quickly accepted my trophy and prizes and we got the hell out of there. I love tennis quite a bit, but man yesterday was just a weird day. It's not often you win two matches, a tournament, and a nice cash prize and feel utterly crappy about it. But alas, this post has made it seem like we're far more depressed than we are. In fact, we're doing fantastic. 

A cool castle we encountered while driving.

We were supposed to head south this morning but out of no where we found out that Eminem has a concert in Paris on the 22nd. Eminem is one of Frankie and I's childhood rap heros that probably won't be touring much longer so we figured why not go see him. Plus my good friend from Pitzer, Jesse Gaddy, as well as 2012 Claremont-McKenna graduate (as well as 2008 Cate School graduate) Julian Martinez are in Paris so we thought we'd spend some time with them. We got some dinner with both of them and wondered around the city seeing some sights including Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Tomorrow we want to go check out Roland Garros and do more exploring. We were supposed to play our next tournament on the 22nd, but we'll pull out of that one and instead play again on the 24th. Later.

Notre Dame. We didn't have too much time to investigate, hopefully tomorrow.  

The Eiffel Tower. Much more impressive than I suspected. Did you know the chief engineer Gustavo Eiffel had an apartment at the top of the tower when it was complete? How awesome is that.

-Max.

Ainey-la-Chateau: Day 1

Yesterday was an up and down day, well as much up and down as a day can be while relaxing in France, but it finished very, very up. I say up and down, because it started a little down, at least for me. At about 8:30 I woke up and drove into town to pick up our daily breakfast (4 croissants, 2 for each of us, and a coffee) and also scope out the tennis courts. When I arrived I was quite disappointed. The club was not too atheistically pleasing, in fact there were only 2 mediocre courts placed in front of a field of horses. In addition the reason we had come, good prize money, was a bit misleading. You see on the internet it only lists the total cash prize, but not how the money is divided amongst the winner, finalist, semifinalist, ect. In this particular tournament there is money awarded to the winner and finalist of each series. A series is a group of rankings, for example the rankings from 30/1 to 15/1 represent series 3. And from 5/6 to 0 represent series 2. So while there is a lot of money being awarded in this tournament, it is distributed amongst many people. I guess what people say is true, you shouldn't just chase money! Finally, many of the same people that played in Ardentes were playing this tournament, and the way the draw worked out Frankie and I would have to face each other in the semi-finals if we both won our first round match. Fortunately, we're traveling to bigger tournaments after this is so this is likely the last time this will happen.

The courts. Notice several horses on the right of the picture.

We didn't play until 18:00 so we killed time swimming in the pool, reading, and just lounging around our campsite. I also did quite a bit of work on scheduling our next tournaments which, considering I don't speak French, can be quite time consuming and difficult. I always call the tournaments and say, "Bonjour. De sole, je ne parle pas français. Do you speak English?" The first part translates to "Hello, I'm sorry I don't speak French." Now if they speak a little English we can get by. But if they don't speak any, and there is no one in the clubhouse who does, we have a bit of a Mexican standoff as we try and figure out how we are going to communicate on a phone without using words. Again, this can be time consuming and difficult. 

Frankie's lunch of chorizo and bread. Doesn't take much to make him happy.

We finally made our way to the courts around 17:00 after grabbing a pre-meal snack of baguettes and Camembert. Frank hopped on court first against an older 5/6 while I had to wait about 15 minutes to face a 4/6 15 year-old. Both of us started a bit slow, I guess that's what lounging in the pool for 6 hours will do to you, and we were also ill prepared for the speed of these hard courts. But we quickly turned things around and I grabbed my first set 6-4, while Frank took his 6-2. In the second set things were a bit dicier. I found myself down 3-4,  40-15 with my opponent serving. He had all the momentum and it felt like I hadn't won a point in several games. But somehow I turned it. He missed a makable volley at deuce and then folded. I held at relative ease to go up 5-4 and then he played an abysmal game making errors on 4 straight shots to give me the match 6-4, 6-4. After the match one of the few people that spoke English said it was the best match he's ever seen played on the Ainey-la-Chateau tennis courts. That doesn't speak too highly for tennis around here, considering the quality was not all that high. 

Francois had also found himself in a bit of a fight. He wasn't playing his best tennis and faced a set point down 4-5, 30-40. After a long exchange his opponent lobbed him and Frankie unloaded on an overhead. But it seems he's spent a bit too much time in the gym lately, as he smacked it a half an inch long. Somehow his opponent missed the call and gave Frankie the point. Big mistake. Frank won the game then reeled off the next 2 for a 6-2, 7-5 win. We meet in the semi-finals in about two and half hours and neither of us are feeling up to the task.

Why's this you ask? Because the folks at Ainey-la-Chateau are as kind as the folks in La Chatre and Ardentes. But these folks are drinkers. In La Chatre l'aperitif was a bottle of wine and cheese. Here it was much whisky as you can drink and a few potato chips. After a round of drinks we decided to head home because the dinner they were serving was quite expensive, and we had a match in the morning. It was the sensible thing to do. But as we were pulling out of the parking lot the tournament director and his translator came sprinting out and told us that if we wanted to stay we could eat for free. Of course we accepted and what a fantastic decision it was. I'm not sure I've ever really eaten a dinner like this. The dinner was more party than dinner and throughout the entire meal one person or another was standing on the table singing some French drinking song that everyone followed along with. There were a few rugby players at the dinner that really knew some tunes and one man who Frankie dubbed Andre Agassi, because he was bald, was emceeing the whole night. He also absolutely loved being called Andre Agassi and despite the fact he spoke practically no English kept yelling, "Where Steffi Graf? Oh Steffi! Where Steffi?" The dinner lasted about 4 hours and by the time it was midnight we had to go home. The French woman, who seem to do a disproportionate amount of work around here, insisted that they drive our car home as it was much safer and we agreed. So now we play each other, albeit both slightly hindered by last night's decisions. The winner plays in the finals at 4:30 and we're told that there is an even bigger party tonight, which they insisted we come to. If we make it through the evening, I'll try and report back tomorrow. 

The grilling process. We mistakenly said we like our meat quite rare, which in France is apparently hardly cooked. It was good, but we probably have some sort of bacterial infection.

-Max 

Photo Dump

A mother of the one of the kids we befriended in La Chatre photographed the finals. Here are the ten photos she sent me. You got to love that last photo.

Reppin' the Hens wear for B.B., not for P-P. 

Wanda and Richard I expect this to printed, framed, and then hung in your living room. 

-Max