We got an invitation to the Inaugural Sabah Team Tennis Invitational when we were playing at Raintree earlier this year... One of the Sandakan fellows passed us the invitation.... We thought it would be nice to play in Kota Kinabalu since we were planning to go there for a friendly match with another club anyway.... Also the venue turned out to be the incredibly beautiful Sutera Harbor Resort...
Pictures really can't describe how beautiful this place is...but if you're like me and haven't been to Kota Kinabalu in 12 years or so..its really worth going to see how nicely they've done up this resort...We took a team of 13 players... all of which you can tell from the smiles below enjoyed themselves...
Most probably, those smiles were as much from the food in KK as the tennis... Here's an example of the giant tiger prawns you can get over there, note the size in relation to lisa's hand holding the fork
The lovely sunsets in Kota Kinabalu also contributed to the smiles
The tennis venue was also very nice with 3 covered courts and 2 outdoor courts. The covering was a reinforced fabric canopy structure and it provided excellent relief from the heat... play was comfortable throughout the day... although we all had some difficulties with seeing the ball and tracking it for volleys and overheads...
If you can't tell by my writing so far, the tennis on this trip was considerably more relaxed than other tournaments... and as there were eight teams participating in a knockout format, we rather unexpectedly found our selves in the finals after only two rounds....
The final was played indoors on Sunday 14 September against a team from Tarakan, Indonesia... They were an extremely fast group of players... Our ladies had a tough time of it. Lisa and Keiko lost the first set and had to go to super tie break to win their point. Our men's 45, Nick and Soon Hong put up a good fight, nearly forcing a super tie break in their second set before coming up short 5-7. Our chances were still looking good with Robert and Sasaki up one set and our heroes Jin Ghee and Otto yet to play... However, even though they puasa (muslim fasting) the Tarakan veterans were too "fast" for our veterans and managed to force and win the super tie break... and their men's 35 were even faster! they beat our captain and Koay in straight sets.... this left our heroes to playing an entertaining exhibition match as the Indonesians were already up 3 -1...
Nevertheless...we certainly enjoyed ourselves and the captain happily accepted the runner's up check for $1000 ! 