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In the a space of 48 hours it’s all gone Pete Tong. In pretty atrocious conditions successive semi-finals in the mens singls and mens doubles have not gone my way. In the singles I simply didn’t play well enough, and in the doubles last night, and excrusiatingly tight second set was lost 11-9 in the tie break… Merde!!! (as they say in France).

The slight consolation is that wer’e in the Mixed final on Saturday so at least there is some chance to salvage something from what has been a pretty dire week on the tennis front!! :((

The Grasshoppers quadruple is still on; having secured the Winter Mixed with Jenny, I’m still in the hunt for the singles, mens doubles, and mixed! Will my flat look like a large gleaming trophy cabinet, or will I grab defeat from the jaws of victory in spectacular fashion… only time will tell!

First up is the mens doubles semi against Giles and Matt; should be a close one.. will keep you posted…!

Yes, I can’t believe it, we actually won the damn thing! After many under achieveing years I have finally won something, and it feels pretty good. Even though I thought Brad and I had a makings of a good partnership, I had it in my mind that we needad another year to crack it, but with three good victories against 3 very good pairs, we have the silverware a year earlier than we hoped!

The match started fairly predicably for us where we had a slow start, trailing 3-1 after the first round of serves. We have got intot he habit of treating the first set as practice which gives us an advantage in the sense that we never get too stressed when we (often) lose the first set. So with the practice over, we still felt pretty good and were playing actually quite well. In the second and thrid sets things just got better and better and we started to play some of the best tenis that either of us have played, and most impotantly we were playing good tennis at the same time! Harvey and Richard, who had won for the past 3 years found it increasingly difficult to cope with us in this form, and after a little short stumble towards the end of the thrid set, casued by a few nerves I think, we closed it out 6-4.

Now we have to consolidate and defend the title next year which will be tough, but its a good position to be in! Well done Brad!

After 4 years I’ve finally dragged myself into one of the open final’s at Grasshoppers with my trusted partner Brad! This marks a momentous occassion in my life as a perennial underachieving tennis player; I really should have got there sooner!

It was a tough match; we started well by blistering throught he first set 6-2. We then had a Murray-style lapse in the second, losing it 2-6. So its was all square going into the 3rd set. The tennis was not that pretty at this stage, but in true professional style, most games were going with serve. At 2-2 we had a breakthrough when we broke Mark’s serve, but then wasted the opportunity when I lost mine straight away. next couple went with serve until we finally managed to break Mark’s serve again, but this time I managed to hold mine for the victory. Score was 6-4 in the end!

I must say we were quite fortunate as although Jerry was playing particularly well, we benefitted from Mark having an unusually bad day, not like him at all so you have to take these opportunities as they don’t come round that often! And lastly, congrats to Brad who’s being playing great recently and definately got us through yesterday with some great serving and volleying. And to think how good he’ll be when he gets a new racquet to replace the antique he’s currently playing with!

So fingers crossed for the final on 6th September..!