PSC vs Lake Club

This match was part of an annual series for PSC vs Lake Club KL. We took a full strength team to KL , but the weather did not cooperate and after waiting for 2 hours, the match was eventually abandoned...

Court Resurfacing Update

Most of us refer to courts 1 - 8 as "Omnicourts", but that's actually a long forgotten brandname. The correct term for this type of court is Synthetic Turf. As previously mentioned, after much research and debate, the club has awarded the contract for resurfacing Courts 1 -4 to Tennis Court Builders, using Grassman Topflight 19 Synthetic Turf. The contract commenced on 28 July, 2008 and will be completed by 20 October. (12 weeks)

The new court carpets were manufactured to our specifications at the end of July and are currently being shipped from Australia to Malaysia. They are expected to arrive in the next week or two, so the current schedule has them shutting down courts 1 & 2 on 25 August to demolish the existing carpets and begin reconditioning the concrete base. Courts 3 & 4 will shut down shortly thereafter and it is expected that reconditioning (patching and filling the concrete) will be complete by 8 September.

It will then take a couple of weeks to lay the new carpets and in-fill them with sand. The contract schedule has a bit of slack in it at this point to allow for any bad weather , and thus the carpets are scheduled to finish laying on 06 October and sand in-filling is scheduled to complete by 20 October.

Its quite possible that if weather is good, they may finish well before this schedule, bearing in mind that the contract has significant penalties for the vendor if construction drags on beyond 06 October. Thus, the schedule provided by the vendor is pretty conservative.

It should be noted that these courts will be two tone, with a dark green interior and a light green exterior (it was felt that green fits in to the club surroundings better than blue)... and these courts will have "integrated" base lines (meaning the base lines are woven into the carpets) and the lines will be white, to improve contrast vs the yellow ball.

The Grassman TopFlight 19 is a "3rd generation" of synthetic turf. The materials used in the carpet represent the "state of the art" in synthetic court surfaces, and we expect them to provide a very suitable and long lasting surface to play on.

Also as Tennis Court Builders has previously successfully resurfaced the PSC courts several times before, we are very confident that they will once again do an excellent job of providing us a nice set of courts to play on for many years to come.

PSC vs Kelab Sungai Petani

I always approach our annual match against the SP club with mixed loyalties because in truth, the first club i joined in Malaysia was the SP club almost 20 years ago and I remain an absent member.... I always look forward to catching up with my old kaki's there and this year was no exception...

We travelled to Sungai Petani on 2 Aug. 2008 as part of a series of games. Our Captain of the Day was Koay Theam Hock.... This years line up was Tennis, Darts, Table Tennis, Badminton , and Hockey. Saturday is a working day in SP so their players were coming in a bit scattered... So our first pair to go down was KK "What do you call that?" Chee and Ooi Soon Hong ... They played a very entertaining match against two of the craftiest players in Kedah, Hang and Shamugam... our Chee had to run like hell to keep up with those foxes... Sham still showing some brilliant touch at the net... But in the end Chee and Soon Hong emerged on top.

Dr. Michael Oh boasted that he could "sure win" if he was allowed to partner Robin Cheah. In fact, he insisted he would buy one table if he failed to deliver the match. Our Captain readily agreed and offered to put them down as first doubles!!!! Michael immediately reconsidered and fixed his stake at "10 Stouts" and he and Robin went down as Third doubles...

They put up a good fight... and both Michael and Robin made some spectacular saves...but eventually went down 4 - 8... So it looks like someone will be enjoying 10 stouts at the club soon... or will it be 1 stout and 10 straws?

Our Japanese Players had all come early in the morning to play golf... A rather tired looking Toida partnered Loo Choo Teng against one father and son team and managed to defeat them.

The morning Golf didn't seem to bother Sasaki a bit and he and Annette ground their opponents down in no time.

Robert and Koay had no troubles in their match... nor did Lisa when she partnered Robert in the other mixed doubles.

Dr. Khushpal and I couldn't find our form and earn even a single break against our opponents and donated another point to SP...

In the end it was PSC 6 -2 KSP .... and the PSC won the series overall but as usual, no one talked much about the score during dinner where a good time was had by all.

PSC vs Betong Tennis Club

Sawadikap!

Dr. Danai and the folks in Betong always treat us with the greatest hospitality, and we did our best to repay them when they came to play on 19 July 2008. Zurina was our captain for the day, but we took turns helping her out... Our captain Loo Choo Teng beefed up our team a bit to ensure we didn't get slaughtered by the Thai's...

and its a good thing we did because even then we struggled a bit with two of our pairs losing their matches... and two other of the seven matches going to 9-7.... We could have easily lost those two and found ourselves down 3 -4 overall, but we managed to pull thru those two and won the day 5 -2 .

But we don't talk to much about the score.... "Mai Pen Rai !" The dinner and the friends are more important...

Both us and our visitors really had a good time and I think everyone enjoyed the food, drinks and good friends... We look forward to going to visit Betong next week .... oops i mean next year!

King's Cup Triangular Match - Kota Bahru

This year's venue for the Annual Triangular Match between PSC, Kota Bahru and Sungai Golok was at the Kelantan Golf and Country Club in Kota Bahru on 12 July 2008. We've been playing this triangular since 2000 and we always approach the away legs of this Triangle with the expectation that we can only beat Kelantan and never defeat the Thais, because they always can assemble a powerful team from all over southern Thailand.

Kota Bahru is only 230 Kilometers from Penang (according to my GPS), but the journey by car takes 5 hours or more , much of it twisty and winding thru the central range that divides the east coast from the west coast of Malaysia... Despite a new highway that eliminates some of the journey... several of us elected to ride the "Firefly"
Firefly was great. Flight was smooth, comfortable and short. Scheduled for 1 hour , we where on the ground in 45 minutes and actual flying time was less than 30 minutes...

Jimmy Boon, Naidu and Mani hit some bad weather when they flew over on Thursday. Their flight was delayed about three hours... its not known what they did with their extra time on the east coast, but whatever it was, they were in poor condition to play on Saturday..

Our first match was against Kelantan, as the Thais were a bit late to turn up... The format was 2 mens, 1 veterans, 1 mixed and 1 ladies doubles... first to reach 9, tie-break at 8 all... We felt we had a pretty strong team, but it quickly became apparent that our men had expended their energy elsewhere. They were absolutely useless against Kelantan... The only exception was our ever-consistent and ever-ready Japanese, Mr. Sasaki , who partnered his wife, Keiko and tormented their mixed doubles opponents and secured the first point for us. Our ladies also swept to victory 9-Love with Lisa partnering our "Chili Padi" , Jawairiah Noordin, (Ladies #1 in Malaysia, Juniors #152 in the World and soon to start touring on the WTA).

We just needed one of the men's pairs to win the tie... but Ooi Soon Hong and Jawairiah's father Noordin went down 5-9. We were still feeling pretty confident as KK Chee and Nik "Shwa Pow" Chua started out leading 4 -1... but they quickly fell apart and KK Chee found himself using the last of his energy to save 3 match points at 5-8 before losing 6-9.

Jimmy Boon and Naidu played the decider but were apparently still feeling the effects of their nite time activities and also crashed out... and thus we lost to Kelantan for the first time in history...

Our Captain, Loo Choo Teng, who is normally the loudest voice in the vicinity suddenly went "Boh Sia" and gave up on our chances ... he got so disgusted that he went off to "Curi Ayam".... (no, not that kind) ... He went to buy Ayam Percik and Murtabok from the famous Yati Ayam Percik where some of us had dinner the nite before.

We fully expected to be slaughtered by the Thais after lunch... but we had the good fortune to watch the Kelantanese play them first. It became apparent as Kelantan stretched the Thais to 3 2 before going down, that if we could repeat our success in the ladies and the mixed doubles, we might be able to snatch 2nd place on count back, if one of our men could raise their game and get one more point against the thais... Kelantan assumed we were going to field the same team as before, (as did the Thais), but I called the Captain while on his chicken expedition and we agreed to juggle the team and see what we could salvage.

Once I clarified with the Kelantan folks that we had not submitted our team for the final round against Sungai Golok, we had a little pow-wow and selected our players... We decided to split Lisa and Jawairiah. We paired Lisa with Keiko Sasaki, and put Jawairiah with her father Noordin. We moved Soon Hong up the veteran's with Mr. Sasaki, and put "Shwah Pow" with Mani as second doubles. All these changes seemed to catch the Thais off guard and they attempted to amend their lineup after submission, but this was disallowed...

KK Chee and Jimmy Boon strapped on their body armor but were murdered by stray bullets from the Thai first doubles pair... but then Lisa and Keiko almost won by default when half the thai team went on the court when one of their ladies twisted her ankle...but there was no reason for us to win that way, because they made short work of their opponents, beating them 9 1 . Then the moment Jawairiah opened fire with her "cannon" overhead and demolished her opponents 9 0 we knew our stategy might work...

We really started cheering when Soon Hong suddenly found his form and together with Sasaki delivered another kosong to the Thai veterans. We checked the previous round results and did a few calculations and realized if we didn't win anything else, we'd still win the tournament on count back because of the large number of kosong's we'd recorded...

Then the Kelantanese folks realized if we beat the thais 4-1, that would put Kota Bahru in second place for the first time in history... so suddenly Nik and Mani had twice as many supporters! They didn't disappoint and they sent the thai's packing 9 -1 and so we managed to win the cup on the road for the first time in history.

The Kelantanese folks were great hosts and we had wonderful food and very warm hospitality from their Captain Abdul Hadi and the rest of the fine folks at the Kelantan Golf and Country Club..

The PSC was really on a roll that day, because we not only won the King's Cup, but we also won the banana eating contest as well as the "Boat Race"!


We really look forward to meeting them all again next year. But Encik Hadi warned us that Thai's will likely be looking for revenge when we all meet up again in Sungai Golok!

Blue courts?

We've completed our evaluations of the tennis court resurfacing quotations and made our recommendations to the GC and tender board. They'll be making the final decision on contract, but the Ad-hoc resurfacing committee and the GC have done an excellent job of refining the quotations so that either vendor's product should be suitable for our players... Just to recap a few things that I can tell you before the contract is awarded: We are recommending that 4 courts be resurfaced at this time , we are also recommending recycling some of the old turf to repair the remaining 4 courts until their resurfacing later, the completion time for resurfacing 4 courts is 12 weeks (3 months) from time of awarding of contract. We requested that they shutdown 2 courts first to try to maximize playing time for our members before the courts are closed for resurfacing...

One thing we haven't discussed is the color choice for the courts... we sort of assumed all along that we would maintain light green/dark green but many members of the GC and ad hoc committee were rather pleasantly shocked to see Blue courts as a possible color choice.... what do you think of this possibility for either the courts themselves or the backcourts?

PSC vs Kulim Club

PSC tennis played host to the Kulim Club on 28 June 2008 as part of the Oh Teik Aun Cup series. Our own KK Chee was tennis captain of the day... He was a bit unsure if he should play until the section captain, Loo Choo Teng, reminded him "It's a cup match... You must Win!"

Perhaps also feeling a bit of heat for losing while playing 3rd doubles in Sitiawan, Chee put up a merciless team that took no pity upon Kulim winning 6-0....

But of course, we also made sure the nice folks from Kulim enjoyed themselves afterwards with pleny of beer and good food. We'll definitely look forward to meeting them all in Kulim next year.