Saturday, March 5, 2011

33rd Sakura Cup 27 March 2011

One of the most anticipated events of the year is the Sakura Cup, which is the Penang Sports Club vs the Japanese Community. We've seen an increase in active japanese tennis players at the club as a result of the Malaysia My Second Home and now we have some former members from japan scheduling their holidays in Penang to coincide with the Sakura Cup so they can come back and play.

This year, the returnees from Japan brought some extra firepower with them in the form of some very skilled ladies players. The PSC found itself struggling to find some pairs that could give them a fight.
The japanese brought a total of 7 pairs of ladies and 8 pairs of men...then they combined the pairs to field 15 pairs of mixed doubles.

As the Japanese consul general described it...most people believe that among Japanese, the men always lead in front and the ladies follow behind... but in this Sakura Cup the Japanese ladies were the ones in front. They whacked our ladies 6 -1 .

Fortunately our PSC men were up to the task and swept the Japanese men 8 - 0, although Albert Cheah and Bryant Thor had to go all the way to a tie break to beat Peter McDade and Sasaki-San.

The Japanese men didn't fare much better in the mixed, dragging their ladies down 2 - 13
so at the end of the day, the PSC retained the cup 22-8

As usual, the highlight of the day was a nice lunch with the Japanese providing Bento boxes for all participants and lots of beer and sake for everyone to enjoy.


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