Dear Friends:

Our host family for the Dallas Challenger was a very nice family.  They were very generous in their hospitality and had two cute young boys called Jackson and James.  Harsh and I had our own rooms and we were very comfortable.  The host family lived about a 10 minute drive from the club where the tournament was held and they dropped us off and picked us up every day.

The club was beautiful and big.  It had a number of indoor courts where the tournament was held as well as a whole bunch of outdoor courts.  The weather was a little rainy and cold and while you could play outside all year round we were told by the locals that the indoor courts came in handy at times, especially in the summer when it got extremely hot.

Harsh and Treat were the number two seeds and played  Alex Bogomolov from the US and Michael Ryderstadt from Sweden.  Alex was hot and had beaten the top seed in singles the day before.  He is a power hitter and rips his returns, moves well and pounds balls from the back.  His partner, Ryderstadt, was coming off a long lay-off and was not yet at his best.

Treat also developed an injury which prevented him from driving his forehand and although he adapted pretty well by chipping his forehand returns and not letting it affect the rest of his game, it was quite a disadvantage.

We came out strong and dominated the first set and played a couple of loose games in the second set to find ourselves tied up at one set all and playing the super tie-breaker which is a crap shoot.  Luckily for us, we started off strong again and got off to a huge lead and dominated to win 10-2.

In the quarters we came up against Andre Bergemann from Germany and Marcio Torres from Brazil.  Again we started off well and polished off the first set effectively and once more we were less precise in the second and before we know it, another crap shoot.  The super tie-breaker was interesting because we lost it a few times and yet kept coming back and even had a match point at 10-9, but we were not able to convert the return of serve and ended up losing 12-10 in a very tightly contested match.  Bergemann played well and we knew he woiuld be the danger man.  He served well and moved well at the net.  However, Torres played better than expected.

The boys were disappointed, especially Treat because of his injury, but what can you do?  They gave it their best shot.

Treat and Harsh were supposed to leave immediately for Italy to play a challenger in Bergamo, but Treat obviously needed to go home to see a doctor to see what the problem was.  The good news it is a muscular injury and not a tendon on the elbow, consequently the injury only prevents him from turning the forearm over in a forehand type of motion.  Hopefully, he will recover shortly after some rest and return to the tour.  It is probably an over use injury.

So Harsh had to scramble for another partner for Bergamo and after a little drama was able to secure Dustin Brown, a Jamaican based in Germany.  Dustin has a huge serve and goes for broke on his returns, which means he makes a lot of errors, but also can return big.  We thought he could be a good match for Harsh because of his power.  We shall see.

We arrived in NY on Friday evening from Dallas and spent the night at my parent’s house and then took off for Italy the next day at 7pm.  The journey was quite brutal, especially for me because I was a little sick and was not able to sleep on the plane at all.  We arrived in Milan after an 8 hours plus flight and then had to take a bus and a train to Bergamo where we arrived at around 1:30pm at our hotel.  Both Harsh and I basically crashed and slept until about 9pm and then had a little dinner and then went back to sleep about 11pm.  We slept another solid 4 hours and then kind of snoozed on and off until the sun rose.

Hi Friends:

Honolulu is beautiful and we enjoyed lots of sunshine and warmth, although there was a little rain at times but usually only at the end of the day.

Harsh and Treat were the top seeds and got through the first round without too much trouble against two Italians, Stoppini and Curagnola.  Truth be told both opponents had already lost their first round singles matches and seemed less then totally motivated in producing their best tennis. 

In the next round we were pitted against the Davis Cup doubles team from Japan, Go Soeda and Hiroki Kundo.  The players all held serve through the first 8 games with our boys always looking more likely to break serve.  Harsh has an excellent return of serve, especially off the backhand side and he was having an excellent day.  Treat’s return is not his strong suit so we have been working on it a lot in practice and it has improved to the point of being patchy.

Treat’s serve however is excellent and for a small guy he can really crank it up.  He won a fast serve competition in Binghampton, NY last year after being clocked at 137mph.  In addition to the heat he can kick it out wide viciously on the deuce court and the slice out wide on the ad court (yes, he is a lefty).  Anyway, at 4-4 in the first set, it was Treat’s serve that was broken, although not because he serve poorly, but more because we did not put away our volley opportunities. 

The opponent’s held and the first set was history.  We started the second set well and finished even stronger by breaking our opponent’s serve twice and clinching the set 6-2. 

At all levels of the tour, except the super 9s and the Grand Slams. the third set of a doubles match has been replaced by a super-tiebreaker (first to 10 points). 

We started the decider well, Treat served up a big serve and Harsh ripped a backhand return up the line.  From there the wheels came off a little and the opponents won 5 points in a row and although we did recover to 5-5, we were unable to produce the goods when it most counted and lost 6-10.

Both players were disappointed, but we were able to extract the positives from this performance and resolved to work on certain things and move forward.

Off the court, my friend Sam has been a wonderful help to us.  He set up housing for us with his friends and that saved the boys some money.  In addition, Sam became our go-to man for all and any problems that arose, a role he played efficiently and with enthusiasm.

Treat left on Friday evening and Harsh and I leave Sunday afternoon.  We will reconvene in Dallas on Monday and hit the practice courts again ready for our next adventure. 

Let’s see what happens!

Dear friends:

After spending 5 wonderful weeks in New York playing tennis with friends and generally chilling and enjoying the beauty of winter from the comforts of my warm and cozy bedroom I left for LA on Thursday to meet up with Harsh Mankad whom I will be coaching for the next few months.

I have coached Harsh part-time for the past approximately 6 years or so and he has recently given up playing singles after reaching an ATP high of about 220 and is now focused on doubles and is presently ranked 107 in the world. 

Since September of last year Harsh has been playing regularly with a young man called Treat Huey and it was the two of them that I coached at the end of last year for 5 weeks.  Harsh will be playing again with Treat for the foreseeable future.

We were in LA for just 2 rainy days and then caught a 6 1/2 flight to Honolulu for the first Challenger of the new season in the USA.  Challengers are the minor leagues of pro tennis, just below the big-time and players must play these events and accumulate enough points to raise their rankings to a level that will allow them to get into pro tour events.

I have a friend who has lived in Honolulu for many years and he was kind enough to arrange accommodation for all three of us.  Treat and Harsh are staying in a small apartment in Waiki, which is close to the beach and in the center of town and I am staying about a 10 minute drive away.  So we rented a car and saved some big money on accommodation.  Players at this level, where the points are priceless, but the prize money is very ordinary, are struggling to pay their bills so any kind of help is always appreciated.

Treat played in the qualies of the singles and lost in the 2^nd round and the doubles will start Wednesday for us, so we have a few days to practice and tune in to each other after a couple of months away.