The quarterfinals were completed this week. Working backwards with mine and Eric’s quarterfinal which was completed Sunday night a few hours ago:
- Eric vs Tom T-On a balmy night at Mt. Si High School, one PE teacher played another (former) PE teacher and it was pretty physical. I was able in the first set to play control a decent amount of the points, and hit a few passing shots and get to net. It was a very long grueling set, I took it at 6-3. At 3-2 in the 2nd after Eric had been hitting many passing shots, I thought I might have to change things up. However, our chess match became him sneaking in to net and he eeked out a game at 3-2, then his steady defense and scrambling and a bit offense made me hit a few errors of mine and he rolled 4 games in a row, last 2 very easily. With his clear momentum, I think he went up 4-1 in super tiebreak, I just thought about keeping ball in and a few offensive approaches and he had few near misses, I grabbed the momentum and pulled it out. Tom wins 6-3, 3-6, 10-4
- Raja vs Dhana–No writeup, Raja must have played well! Raja wins 6-2, 6-3
- Will vs Tri–Great match at Genessee Courts. Tri’s offense had Will scrambling for a brutal first set. However, Will broke it down and said that Tri’s shots were just too much for him after the first set and Will was unable to keep it away from his Tri’s great forehand. Second set Will was forced to go for more power to neutralize the offense, but Tri’s game has just been elevated this entire year. Tri wins 6-4, 6-1
- Rahber vs Tom S–The Two time champ broke it down below: Rahber wins 7-5, 7-6
“Tom’s level was much higher than our previous match – he was serving bigger and worse for me, returning really aggressively with pace and accuracy. Groundies were much bigger too from his side – so whatever he’s been doing it obviously improved his game. I was on the back foot much of the first set and it was all about trying to neutralize Tom’s firepower and just hang in points. I was able to pull in front finally got a loose game from Tom to take the set
2nd set Tom immediately fired up his game and went ahead 3-0 and I was hoping he would crumble with some pressure – instead he started going for more particularly off the forehand wing but also some superb heavy rips from his backhand. My slice which I was hoping would throw him off was completely ineffective and he was tearing me a new one. Score went to 1-4 and I just decided I was going to keep it in play and deep and see what Tom could do with high deep balls – fought back to 4-5 and Tom had a couple of set points I believe. At this point our serves had slowed down and we were both firing the doubles which saved my ass. I managed to scrape to 6-5 but Tomas held with a solid game and we ran into the tiebreaker which I was able to pull out with some good returning. Excellent game and lots of fun!
SEMI-FINALS
1 Rahber vs 4 Raja
2 Tri vs 6 Tom