PSC 10nis: 31st Annual Sakura Cup

I was captain of the day for this year's Sakura Cup, held on 1 March 2009. For those of you who don't know... the Sakura cup is an annual competition between the Penang Sports Club and the Japanese Community of Penang. The cup was first donated in 1979 by the Consul General of Japan, so this is the 31st consecutive year we've held this event.

The Japanese community in Penang doesn't have a tennis court so we jointly share in hosting the event at the Penang Sports Club every year. As a result, its one of the most fun and social tennis events of the year. We always wind up with lots of Japanese food, sake and beer!

However, this year the tennis was a bit more intensely played as we somehow managed to lose the cup to Japan last year for the first time in 30 years...

Also, nearly all the japanese in the community who play tennis regularly are also members of the Penang Sports Club...so its only this one day of the year that they play against the club...

This fosters some very interesting and intense matches....

This is our top pair, Danny "World Class" Toh and our Tennis Captain Loo Choo "Cramps" Teng flanked by and Mr. "Always Comes Back" Haruo and Mr. "Never Die" Saskai... Our top pair turned out to be one of PSC's few losing pairs on that day...

We played 27 matches that morning, 10 men's doubles, 12 mixed doubles and 5 ladies doubles... We were blessed with beautiful clear skies and although it was a bit hot (damn hot actually), we finished everything on time and retired to the air conditioned restaurant for some good food and fun...

The most enjoyable part of the Sakura cup is actually the friendly bonding that goes on between our japanese friends and our local PSC members.... particularly after a few jugs of beer!

This year we didn't have Karaoke session out of respect to our club president who passed away a few days before the event....

So I'm quite sure they are NOT pointing to Lisa to ask her to go up and sing! I'm pretty sure they are indicating to the waiter that His Excellency, Mr. Hideaki Hoshi, the Consul-General of Japan needs more "biru" (japanese for beer). Mr. and Mrs. Hoshi paid us the honor of coming out to court side and watching most of the events.... and it was great pleasure to have he and his wife join us at our lunch...

The tennis result this year was a return of the cup to the Penang Sports Club with an overall result of 23 -4 in favor of PSC. Our SEC chairman , Albert Wong, is shown here accepting the cup from his excellency Mr. Hoshi.

But the social result was , as always, a delight. Lots of good japanese food, (the japanese contributed a beautiful bento box of japanese food to each player), lots of beer (His excellency donated 5 cartons of Asahi Beer!) , lots of Sake and Sochu, Lots of new friends made, and a few bittersweet farewells for some Japanese who'll be going back home soon...