From the front lines in Normandy

Our first tournament is officially underway! Our trip from Rouen to Juloville was full of last minute dashes for buses, metros, and trains. We had to be outside of our apartment at 6:17 am to catch a bus to the metro to start the journey (the next train we needed to catch didn’t run til 5pm), and in classic style, Marc and I came bursting through the front doors of the apartment lugging our stuff at 6:16 as the bus was loading its passengers. We ran as fast as humanly possible, dragging and pulling our luggage like the 6:17 bus was the last boat of the titanic, and somehow we shoved our hand in the door of the bus right as it was closing. Our itinerary was a tongue-tying lesson in French travel; We took the bus to the metro, the metro to the Rouen train station, a train from Rouen to Caen, another train from Caen to Coutane, a bus from Coutane to Granville, and then a bus from Granville to Julouville! We have been here two nights now. It’s a sleepy beach town right on the Normany coast, close to many WWII landing sites.

Probably the most drastic decision we have made yet was to begin camping at the tournaments. Our friend Gustavo told us that many tournaments allow you to set up a tent right by the courts, (for free!) so we were ALL about that and immediately invested in a tent, sleeping bags, and a small camp stove. We have been cooking all of our meals for the past two days, and have saved SO much money already. We calculated it out, and we have been spending about 2.5 euros per meal, which will barely buy you a Coca-Cola in Paris. It’s been great, aside from the fact that it has been raining on and off literally the WHOLE time. It’s very similar to the Santa Cruz weather in the summer, very cloudy and drizzling for an hour and then sunny and hot the next two hours. Every night so far we have been woken up by rain pouring down, and have had to dash out at who-knows what time in the morning to get our clothes and suitcases under cover. We keep joking that we are tennis nomads, but its pretty close to the truth.

Despite having very primitive cooking utensils and very little camping gear, were roughing it and having a great time, just laughing off the challenges and chillin in our tent right next to BOMB clay courts in France. Were the first and last ones on the courts each day, and it’s free, so it’s pretty hard to beat.

Learning to play on the red clay has been a big challenge, especially because the tournament is going on at all times and we only can get on the court around 8:30 pm. It stays light here until about 10, so we have been practicing sliding, serving big kicks, and how to approach the net on clay. Its getting better everyday, in everyway, but there is still a lot to learn.

Colin’s first match on clay:

I played today against a French guy who had a pretty classic clay game, he ran around EVERYTHING he could to hit his forehand and just gave me huge looping balls to my backhand. When I did get it to his backhand, he sliced most of the time and pretty much just yanked me around the court for about two hours.

I started out pretty shaky, just trying to be consistent but not going for enough attacking balls and lost 6-3. I almost got broken the first game in the second, was down 40-0, and barely held thanks to some big serving.

I was still not attacking well enough in the beginning of the second, and got down an early break. At 2-4 I got broken again, and was getting really frustrated. I decided to start stepping up on as many forehands as I could, and really run around it and get to net. I won a hard fought game at 2-5 and got some good momentum, holding serve and fighting off a match point. I stepped up on two of his second serves at 4-5, and had some loud “come ON's" going, and broke back again. At 5-5 we had a deuce game that lasted about 15 minutes, with long points that really made me realize how long its been since I have played a legit match. I ended up holding, and felt like I really could pull of the set. We got to a tiebreak, and I missed three easy returns. Clay court returning is still giving me trouble because the ball is SO freakin slow. It just sits there and you get no momentum on the ball. I ended up losing 7-4 in the breaker, and he cracked a forehand for a winner to win the match.

After the match, my opponent Sebastien bought me a beer and offered to hit at his club in the next town over, so overall it was disappointing but SUPER fun and just part of learning how to play on a new surface.

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