Uk Open continued

Sunday morning….
Ugh…..hotel breakfast doesn’t start till 8. I have to be at the venue by then. Those of you who know me, know my days start with two eggs and bacon, but not today!

I’m excited to play with Leo today. I’ve talked about my pickleball husband before. We have not seen each other for months, but we just click on the court.

Once again, we are divided into pools.  Our pool has 5 teams.  We will play each team  one game to 11, win by two. Then from pool play, the top two advance.  After four challenging games, we progressed to a preliminary game (won) to get to the quarter finals.  In the quarter finals, we lost to one of the best Spanish teams (Virginia and Carlos).  It was disappointing since we had beat them in the pool play, but Carlos is an amazing player, and took over the court!  Virginia is a very good player too, but in this game her job was to stay out of Carlos’ way!

The rest of the matches to the final were so good!  Unfortunately a very bad line call by another team (also a very good team) knocked Carlos and Virginia out of the chance for the gold medal, but they did win the bronze. The winners were Gold- Finland!  Silver – Northern Ireland!

There were some pretty amazing new young players at the tournament.  One player, Sam from England, won three medals, a bronze in men’s singles 3.0, a gold in men’s doubles 3.0, and a gold in mixed 3.0 with Sara, another up and coming player from the U.K.

Guy, another teen aged from England won a bronze, and also a silver with his older brother Louie.

The competiton level has increased tremendously since my last tournament In Europe (Amsterdam) last May.  Spain also has many new, younger players crossing over from padel, a racquet sport popular there.  I was especially impressed with the new Spanish women.  With a little more work and drilling they will soon be standing on the medal podium consistently.

Next up, Finland in under two weeks!

You can see my photos from the UK tournament by clicking the Photo Gallery tab above.