Third Tournament in Lunel, France

After arriving back in Montpellier about 10 days ago, I have been training with 2 of my teammates from UC Davis and another player from Cal Lutheran. The first week we trained on red clay to get ready for the first tournament on clay which took some getting used to and learning how to slide. It has been great to work with a good coach, Jean-Michel, who has coached a lot of great players.



This is the town that we are staying in and it's called Viols-le-Fort and is a small town about 30 minutes north of Montpellier. I am staying in an apartment with the 3 other guys which has been fun so far.


This is the site of the tournament as the club had only 2 clay courts which they used for the tournament. This club had high-quality clay and it was a lot of fun to play on.



The great thing about the French system is that the tournament is a feed in so there are many different brackets that feed in. This is the final bracket and I won my first match against a good French player who used to be a really good player but is about 35 years old now. I was down 3-6, 2-4 but managed to turn the match around by playing more aggressive and win 3-6, 7-5, 6-0.


In the semifinals, I lost to a good clay court player who had the same French ranking as me in a tough match where I had a lot of opportunities. I served for the first set at 5-4 but couldn't close it out and ended up losing 6-7(3), 3-6. But I definitely learned a lot playing on clay and it was a great experience.

I won 125 Euros for making the semifinals and off to the next French money tournament this weekend on hard court.


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