ATP Malaysian Open

Lisa and I had a great visit to the ATP Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpur after we played the Selangor Club match... If you've never seen top class tennis live and in person you really should plan to go and see next year... You really can't grasp how they hit the ball when you see it on TV. Its amazing to see live....

The first day we saw some great tennis action from Taylor Dent

who was nice enough to hit one of the 'prize' balls to me after he won his match, perhaps with a little persuasion from the friendly prize ball girl...

I won a player's towel... (which i hope they improve the quality of next year... Berdych complained about the towels)....

We also saw a great match with Marcos Baghdatis and Asia #1 Lu Yen Hsun from Taiwan. Baghdatis is one of the most entertaining players to watch on the tour... It was a real pleasure to watch him win this match in 3 hard fought sets.

The tournament was really top class. The venue and the court was excellent...a very exciting group of players . They even had a hawkeye system installed and I could finally get a look at the hi-res cameras that make it work. As an engineer , I've always been fascinated by the technology behind hawkeye... Click here to read an excellent explanation of how hawkeye works.

All in all, it was a great tournament and an incredibly good value opportunity to see world class tennis right here in Malaysia... no need to travel around the world ...can see closer and better live next year in Kuala Lumpur....

Psc vs Taiping CRC

This is part of an annual series of games which was played on 10 oct 2009. Lisa, Patsy and I drove down to taiping early to try out some of the recommended fried fishball koay teow shown here.

The kuih also very nice.

We were a bit worried about the weather and indeed it began to rain at 2pm... This is pretty normal for Taiping. If it doesn't rain in the morning, it will likely rain in the afternoon...if not, then it will surely rain in the evening. Fortunately, the shower passed quickly and that seemed to satisfy the Taiping weather gods, as it was dry the remainder of the time...

We played 5 mens doubles, 1 ladies doubles and one mixed double , first to reach 8, tiebreak at 7 all. Our Ladies pair of Jenny and Annette won convincingly... But Soon Hong and Albert were unable to get past their men's pair and lost in the tie break. Lisa and Sasaki were able to pull thru in the mixed doubles. Loo "no cramps anymore" Choo Teng and Haris, also won. An Injured Naidu and Captain of the Day , KK Chee lost as did our Chow and Robin...

Thus it was , for the second event in a row, I was called upon to play the decider, this time partnering Harry Ooi... As I later found out, the stakes were a bit higher this time, because the overall series of club vs club was also decided by the outcome of this match.

My partner, Harry served well and we were fortunate to find ourselves up 6 - 2. But our opponents altered their strategy a bit and before we knew it, we were struggling at 6 -6... (we certainly like to live dangerously)

Luckily i got thru my service game ok and we broke them to win when they were serving 6-7....

My first words when I came off the court were.... "where's the beer? "

The hospitality at the Taiping Club was excellent and we look forward to hosting them in Penang next year.

Tennis Court Resurfacing update 2

The resurfacing work on courts 5 - 8 is proceeding on schedule. Since this is a new vendor, we required that the manufacturer send a representative to supervise the actual laying of the turf. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the representative was not content to supervise, he preferred to do the work himself! With 24 years experience in laying synthetic grass courts, he is a superb craftsman and amazing to watch his skills in action.

We were blessed with some clear weather and the courts were laid and glued within a week's time. All that is left now is to finish infilling the sand and install the new net posts and we'll be playing all four courts again soon.