Hellhens in France!: Veules-Les-Roses: Day 1 and 2

Okay. Lots to share. We just got back from the beach, which was quite nice. A random thing we've noticed over the last few days is that it seems impossible, or at least stupid, that the Allied forces invaded France in Normandy because every beach we've seen has sheer walls of cliff every where you look. However we learned a useful little tide bit of information today. From Etretat to Dieppe, an 120 kilometer stretch, there are these cliff formations and towns only appears in the small valleys that form between cliffs. This stretch of land is known as the Côte d'Albâtre, or the Alabaster coast. The allies invaded further west near Caen for several reasons, one of them being that these giant cliffs don't exist.

Panoroma of a big storm that hit us in Saint Vallery en Caux.

Chilling at the beach. Not a bad place to be after getting your butt kicked.

Anywho, I played in the semifinals this morning and lost quite bad. But let's start from the beginning. We played our first rounds of the Veules-Les-Roses tournament yesterday, Saturday the 3rd, at 10 in the morning. I played the weakest player I've played in my time in France. A 4/6 who really didn't have any interest in being on the court. He had some good strokes but made tons of errors and I won 6-2, 6-0 with relative ease.

Another view of the club.

Frank had a match tougher matchup. He was playing a 2/6 who on August 15th is headed to Georgia to play Division II tennis for a school he either couldn't pronounce or we couldn't decipher. The practice of French players going to the U.S. to play is a bit strange, but I'll explain that in a bit. Another aside before getting into the match was despite the club's beauty, the courts were awful. The surface is what is referred to as 'classic clay' and is really just carpet with a few kernels of sand on top which makes it incredibly slippery. Throughout the tournament players were falling all over the place and it was really quite dangerous. Especially since the edges of the court had at thick coat of sand so if you slid from the interior of the court to the exterior, your shoes would stop and you would tumble forward. I almost took a nasty spill into a concrete barrier but luckily managed to grab the fence first.

On to the match. I get the sense Frank doesn't enjoy waking up before 10 because in his first set he looked sluggish. He was playing okay, but to compete against good players on clay, or whatever this surface was, you can't be sluggish. He got broken early and couldn't get it back and lost the set 6-3. In the second he looked much sharper. The set stayed on serve until a tiebreak were Frank went up 6-4. On the first set point the kid just light up a 2nd serve return for a forehand winner. And on the second set point, they had a brilliant ally where again the kid roped a forehand winner. Frank lost the next point on a silly error and found himself serving down 6-7. He hit a 1st serve off of the line which the kid poofed over the net and called out. After some examination of the mark he decided it may have been in and insisted that they play a let instead of giving Frank the point. It's sort of common practice to play a let on close calls over here, but some people definitely take advantage of it. Frank lost the point and lost 3-6, 6-7(6). It's disappointing to lose a set when you have set points, but the kid just played unbelievable for the last 4 points of the tiebreak.

After the match we went back to Saint Vallery en Caux to grab our stuff and take down our tent. While we were there a young boy Frank had met while doing laundry the day before began to attack us with squirt guns which was pretty funny. Eventually we evaded the French assault and returned to Vueles-Les-Roses for my 18:00 match. You would think they'd be grateful considering we saved their butts in World War II, but alas. I was playing the same 1/6 player that Frankie had lost to in Yvetot. My backhand was feeling good, and considering this lefty's tendency to hit everything to the backhand of right handed players, I liked my chances. I came out playing well and getting very lucky. I think I got 4 let cord winners in the first 3 games. My French opponent was not pleased. I went up 3-0 in a hurry, then 4-1, then 5-2 and finally I held to win the first 6-2.

At first Frank's friend just wanted to play soccer.

But his little brother was quite vicious...

...like seriously vicious.

But my opponent held strong. He came out much sharper in the second, making few unforced errors, and making me earn everything. After hitting so many backhands my wrist was starting to tire and every other changeover I was popping an ibuprofen. My liver can thank me later. We stayed on serve for a while before he had a break point opportunity at 3-4, 30-40. We played a long point which ended in a fortunate sequence for me. I came to net and stuck a forehand volley down the line. He got there in plenty of time and chipped a ball to my backhand side. I had slid into my forehand volley so my recovery was poor and I did my best to get to the next ball. I couldn't hit a normal volley so I did a little flick with my backhand and fortunately it went in for a winner. I held serve a few points later and we stayed on serve until 5-5 when I finally got a break. I went up 40-0 in the next game, double faulted my first match, played a terrible point on the next, and finally played a solid point to force an error and win the match 6-2, 7-5. My wrist was so sore after the match that I was certain I'd be unable to hit backhands today (and I was pretty much right) but this was without a doubt the best and most consistent my backhand has been since my injury.

They sell mattresses at the flea market...I don't understand.

What happened after my match can only be described as extremely odd. Over the course of the day we'd befriended this 14 year-old Frenchman named Matt. He's French only by blood, but was born and grew up in Winchester so is really quite British. He was a really cool kid and as the last match was finishing, Matt and the tournament director, some 17 year-old French kid, invited us to stay and have a drink. We said sure, why not? They then informed us we couldn't have a drink until the last match finished, but that was fine, a bit odd but no big deal. As soon as the last match finished and the players departed the club, techno music blared from the clubhouse, and scores of 14 to 17 year-old kids appeared from all directions and a party began in the clubhouse. Apparently the tournament director had the club to himself for the night and not 5 minutes after the last ball had been struck there were 20 teenagers drinking beers and smoking cigarettes throughout the tennis club. It was very odd, and incredibly funny. We really wanted to stay just to see what was going to transpire, but unfortunately we could not. We had to find something to eat and find a place to sleep. Matt had offered to let us stay at his grandmothers but apparently she had fallen earlier in the day and was not well. After this offer fell through the tournament director said we could camp in his backyard, but after asking his parents that was also not allowed. During my match today, his dad came up to Frankie and apologized profusely saying it had been a bit too late for us to set up our tent. So unfortunately we had to leave, hit up a kebab shop for dinner, and found a nice little camping spot (for free) on the cliffs above the ocean in Veules-Les-Roses. Earlier in the day Matt had told us that Veules-Les-Roses had recently been rated the sixth nicest city in France, and it was nice, but I didn't think it any nicer than any of the other coastal towns he'd been in.

Veules-Les-Roses Coastline.

The real oddity about Matt was his life dream. Above all else, and I really mean this, his life dream was to be a journalist in San Antonio, Texas. He repeated it to us a number of times and loved the fact that Frankie was from Texas and would soon be going to school in San Antonio. I suppose his obsession with San Antonio was acceptable because he loved basketball and France's finest player, Tony Parker, plays on the Spurs, but still this dream of his was quite odd. Especially considering how adamant he was about it.

We woke up this morning at about 9:00, ate several croissants, and made our way to the club for my 10:00 match. I was playing a 24 year-old -2/6 player named Xavier. Xavier had apparently made it the quarter-finals of the French Junior Championships some years ago and had played Division 1 tennis at Troy, some school in Alabama. He could definitely play, but I knew at the very least I could play with him. But I came out playing terribly. I suppose I should do a better job warming up because the first six games were over in 20 minutes and I hadn't won one of them. It didn't help that I couldn't hit a backhand without fear because it was very tender from using it so much the day before. The second set was much better, but I still lost 6-2. I was not too happy with the way I played, but the guy I lost to won the tournament with relative ease and I can't be too disappointed with my best result to date.

Right now we're hanging at the Veules-Les-Roses country club, Frankie is hitting with some of the juniors, and I'm blogging away. Tonight we will sleep at the same campsite before making our way to Caen and Arromanche tomorrow. As mentioned, those are the two cities with the biggest monuments to D-Day so I'm pretty excited.

Our campsite in Veules-Les-Roses

Before I go, just a quick aside about French players coming to the United States to play in college. It's very odd. How it works is that they pay some guy about 2000 euros to sent demo videos to a collection of American coaches. If the coaches are interested they contact you and eventually offer you a scholarship. The thing is, the kids here have absolutely no idea what they're getting themselves into. Xavier, the guy I lost to, said he did very poorly on his SATs the first time he took them because he didn't speak English. So he just payed someone else to take it for him the second time, aced the test, and was accepted on a full scholarship to Troy. But after a year he hated the coach, because he'd never met him, hated Alabama, and simply left. The kid Frankie played barely knows where he is going to school and has no idea how class selection or anything really works. It's all a bit sad and it seems the only people the system is good for is the middlemen and the coaches. The middlemen get paid their fee and the coaches get a good player for at least a year. Xavier told us whenever he hears of someone preparing to pay a middlemen he tells them to stop it and just find the schools you like and contact the coaches yourself. Which while difficult, seems like a much better idea.