WORLD UNIVERSITY CHAMPIONSHIPS-WEDNESDAY, JULY 6Day 3
The US men played today at 10 AM against Hong Kong. Both Hong Kong and the
US have lost our 2 men's matches to Taipei and Ukraine. We hoped to break
through against Hong Kong and we presented the lineup of Adam Hugh, Han Xiao,
and Shashin Shodhan. Hong Kong made a nice friendship gesture before the
match handing each of our players pins. Han started off against a penholder
Chu Hiu Yu and had trouble returning his inside-out serves. Han had a 2-1
lead but couldn't hold on for the victory and lost 11-6 in the fifth and final
game. Adam played very well in his match against Tang Ka Chun and beat him
convincingly. The only game the Hong Kong player won was a deuce third game.
Adam was ripping forehands and backhands and won one point where he was
lobbing and hit a backhand loop winner from the barriers. Next up was Shashin
Shodhan who got off to a poor start by out-right missing 7 serve returns in
the first game. However, he returned serves much better after that and the
match was a toss-up as each of the next 3 games were decided by 2 points with
Shashin winning the second and Liu Hiu Ming winning the third and fourth. The
Hong Kong player would often get Shashin in the middle as Shashin needs to
become quicker and lose more weight to get back to his old form. Han Xiao
wins the fourth match 3-1 with every game being decided by 2 points. Spanning
Shashin's final 3 games in his match and Han's 4 games in his match, 7 games
in a row were decided by 2 points! It's safe to say this was a close match.
Adam then continues his hot streak from his
earlier match and wins deuce in the fourth to give US its first team win in
this tournament. Adam returned Chu Hiu Yu's serves much better than
Han did and that was the main difference between Adam's win and Han's loss.
Han said "all the Hong Kong players have illegal serves as the left arm is
hiding the contact."
The US Women were up next on the same table against 3rd seeded Slovakia.
Amanda was up first and had a 10-6 lead in the first game before her opponent
Petra Skabar came back to deuce it. However, Amanda held on to a 12-10 first
game win. However, Amanda was dominated after the first game scoring only 10
points total the rest of the match. Katherine was up next had gotten lost on
her way to the tournament hall and so was not properly warmed up. Laura
said "Katherine has a terrible sense of direction. Now don't put this in
the writeup!" In addition to being sleepy and not properly warmed up,
Katherine had her left eye mildly infected and caused vision problems. She
had only one contact in her eye so didn't have proper depth perception. These
incidents helped Katherine's opponent Jana Tomawazi dominate her and Katherine
was never really in the match. Laura then suffered from a similar fate as she
was never really in her match and like Katherine, lost 3-0. Laura said "I
look forward to playing doubles and not singles." She has a good mixed
doubles partner in Adam Hugh. Mixed doubles will be the event we play
tomorrow. Laura had improved to an estimated 2200 rating while practicing in
Sweden and at the 2004 Olympic Trials, she was putting up a good fight to
Jasna Reed until she broke her elbow playing by tearing ligaments around her
elbow that caused her bones to be out of position. She has never been the
same since that surgery and could not play for one year after that serious
elbow injury.
The US team went on a tour around Maribor along with other countries that
signed up for this tour provided by the organization. It was a good chance to
learn about this city and we had a good guide that educated us about the
city. It is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the oldest vine
in the world which is 400 years old. After we returned, we got some dinner
and then all the teams had their team pictures taken in uniforms. There was a
large TV screen set up in the hall across where we played our matches to watch
World Cup soccer tonight between France and Portugal. Last night, everyone
was glued to their TV sets to watch Italy defeat Germany with 2 goals in the
final minute of overtime. France and Italy will be in the final. Tomorrow is
mixed doubles and men's and women's singles start the day after. We mingled
with players from various countries through broken English or translators and
this has been a fun trip for all of us so far.
THE US TEAM WENT ON A TOUR OF MARIBOR.