Early in January, a Canadian IC team went to the Bahamas for
a week of tennis organized by the Bahamian IC.
There were 6 teams entered in the doubles event and we got to play every other team.
Beside the Canadian team there were teams from Bahamas, Barbados , Great
Britain, USA and an International team made up mostly of US and Bahamian
players.
We were scheduled to play a different country each day made
up of 5 doubles matches using no-ad games and a super-tiebreaker instead of a
third set to keep the length of each match down. These matches were for a men’s over 60 and over 65 team (or combined
age over 130), a women’s over 40 and over 60 team ( or combined age over 100),
a men’s over 50 and over 55 team (or combined age over 110), a mixed over 6o
team (or combined age over 120) and a mixed over 50 and over 40 (or combined
age over 90). Our team members were
Shaheer Mikhail, John Payne, Pam Olley, Pam Rosenbaum, Peter Neilson and Owen
Pellew and luckily for us our ages gave us a some flexibility in setting up our
pairings so we could give a player a break for a day.
Day 1 we got to play the International Team and were able to
put 5 wins on the board. On day 2 a rainstorm came through in the morning and play
was delayed until 11am. We were scheduled to play the 2nd seeded
Bahamian team. Their team included one of the current Fed Cup players who was
able to play because of the combined age option. It was decided to only play
matches to reach a decision...unfortunately for us we lost the first three
matches but it should be noted that Owen and Peter lost their match in the
super-tiebreaker third set. On day 3 we played the USA, the top seeded team.
This time we got to play all five matches – however we didn’t get to win any. Day
4 we took on the Brits and squeaked out a 3-2 win. The three matchups on day 5 worked out due to
be the playoff placings thanks to the smart seeding by Mickey Williams the
referee. This had USA and Bahamas playing for first and second spots, Canada
playing Barbados for third spot and England playing the International team.
John Payne had scheduled a fishing trip with his sons for
that morning and so Owen and Mikhail paired up using the combined age rule to
win handily. The two Pams were unable to win the second set tie-breaker which
would have given them a chance for a win. Then came a rain shower to delay
play. After some discussions on how we should proceed, it was decided to play a
full match for the younger men’s doubles. Peter and Owen came out like gangbusters
winning the first set easily and then falling in the second set to the
Barbadians. Fortunately they were able to pull things back together to take the
super-tiebreaker. By this time it was
starting to get dark, but the USA had
beaten the Bahamas. So we played both mixed doubles at the same time and
decided to play 4 game sets. We
convinced Owen, who had been the MVP for the week, to play with captain Pam as
the 120 plus team. While John Payne and the other Pam took on the hard hitting
youngsters. Owen played brilliantly and
Pam was sneaky steady and they were able to pull off the win to put Canada into
3rd place overall.
The Bahamas event is fun because of the doubles play, the
all inclusive site, which makes socializing among the teams easy and Kit’s
insistence on having a traditional British style team entertainment
evening. You’ll be happy to know that
the Canadians impressed with their team rendition of “At the net” a parody of
“At the Hop”. The Brits performed a very
funny skit on the Royal family complete with photo masks and the Barbadians got
into the swing of things with their presentations. The evening was rounded out with dancing to a
local band. The piano bar was a popular
spot all week, not only did the hard core end up singing along with the resort
pianists most evenings. Barbadian team member, Canadian born and trained Julie
Salomon, a concert pianist, played for us at cocktail hour one evening.
Thanks go to Kit Spencer and the Bahamians for
being such good hosts and to the Canadian team for a great week of tennis and
good sportsmanship!!
