8th Straits Settlement Games

This year it was The Melacca club's turn to host the 8th Straits Settlement Games 6th to 7th Dec. There were 6 games in the series, Football, Tennis, Table Tennis, Squash, Badminton, & Snooker.

The Melacca club's sports center is about 10 Kilometers out of town at lovely location on the seaside...
We were to play both our matches on Sunday... so we had a good opportunity to view the opposition when Singapore Swimming club played the Malacca club on Saturday. Their tie ended 4 - 3 in favor of Malacca, but was not quite completed because of rain.

On Sunday morning, our tennis team whacked Singapore 6 -1 with several kosongs delivered... and the 1 loss was also a very close tie break in the ladies doubles....

We had seen the previous day's match get interrupted by rain and we tried to get the Malacca folks to start early , but the best we could do was to get them to start 2 pair at 3 pm with the clouds already threatening...

It looked as though we were going to repeat the same treatment for Malacca as our first mixed doubles pair was up 3 - 0 and our veterans were up 4 - 1 when the rain began to come down and we had to abandon the match.

As all three teams had played one match , it fell to a countback to award PSC the tennis championship based on our 6 -1 result against Singapore Swimming Club...

So tennis delivered for the PSC...but in the end the Straits Settlement Trophy wound up as a tie between PSC and the Malacca club...so the cup stays at Malacca for 6 months and then will be sent to PSC.

To see more photos from our trip to Melaka, click here

Audrey Oh Cup - PSC vs Royal Selangor Club

We played this match at home on 29 Nov 2008. This is one of the longer running annual matches that the tennis section plays. The match is between PSC and the Royal Selangor Club and was inaugurated in 1960. This means we have been playing this match for the past 48 years!

Before the match, we had a bit of confusion as we looked high and low for the Cup and couldn't find it at PSC... Eventually we learned that although we had won the match the last time it was played at RSC, we apparently were so well entertained by the RSC that we forgot to bring back the cup and it was still with them!

As our captain Loo Choo Teng was overseas, I was captain of the day for this match. About 40 of the RSC folks came by bus this time, but unfortunately i was informed by their convenor Mr. Kumar, that they could only convince one of their lady players to travel.

Thus we agreed upon a format of 6 Mens Doubles and 1 Mixed Doubles. First to reach 9 with a tie break at 8 all. The weather cooperated (it had been raining all morning) and we were able to start on-time at about 3:30 in the afternoon.

Our home ground advantage was a bit too tough for the RSC folks, but they played gamely. Their 4th pair nearly won a tie break against our young men, Wei Khah and Eric... but in the end PSC prevailed 7 - 0.

The RSC folks were understandably disappointed but they were able to drown their sorrows in a lot of beers and we had some great food from the new caterer...so everyone was pretty happy when we welcomed the cup back home!

YB Dato Freddy Choong Cup

The PSC put two teams into the other YB Dato Freddy Choong Cup competition (the annual match against Hat Yai is also referred to as Freddy Choong Cup ) on 18-19 Oct. The Freddy Choong Cup is for veterans 45 and above. Our PSC Red Team had a bye the first round and defeated FTS in the semi-final 2-1 . Our Red Team went on to win the final against Penang CRC 2-0.

The PSC Black team cleverly avoided a PSC vs PSC clash by losing in the first round and going on to victory in the Plate competition.

Our Captain, Loo Choo Teng, generously hosted a wonderful dinner at a Chinese Restaurant for both the teams as well as the tennis committee...

Well done PSC and congratulations to all the players and participants in this year's YB Dato Freddy Choong Cup.

PSC mixed doubles league

We had our annual mixed doubles league event on 8th and 9th November 2008. In the past, the league is a rather long drawn out affair lasting a few weeks... there is often scheduling problems, missed matches, and walkovers... So this year we decided to have it all in one go over one weekend..more like a tournament... except the format was round robin.

The response was quite good and the winners are as follows:

Group A Champions - Masami & Keiko "Go Sasaki Go!"
Runners up - Jos "Dutchman" Fraaije and Jenny "Karaoke" Khoo

Group B Champions - Loo Choo "Don't waste" Teng & Ngiam "Shiok" Li Sheok
Runners up - Dr. "Bones" Alif & Zurina "Ju Ju" Meah

Group C Champions - Robin "Netman" Cheah & Ivy "Never Miss" Goon
Runners up - Fuji "San" & Leanne "Profile" Cheam

Congratulations to the all the winners and participants and please give a nice word of thanks to Zurina for organizing the event this year.

PSC vs Hat Yai Municipality Tennis Club - Freddy Choong Cup

We were delighted that the folks from Hat Yai could come and visit us this year. Last year they had to postpone because of the elections and so forth... Mostly we were delighted because it means now we can go to Hat Yai next year....or next week!

The Hat Yai Team was captained by Colonel Soonthong but their true Patriarch is General Pingphang . Myself and KL Tan played a VIP friendly against the still strong 82 year old General Pingphang and his partner. We won by a nose 9 - 7...

The score of the Cup match was 5 - 2 but that scoreline doesn't show the anxiety that our Captain experienced when 4 of our top pairs started out losing...

EC and Datin Lau MA were down 1 - 7 , Robert and Sasaki were down , Lisa and Keiko were losing, as were Albert and Soon Hong...

Luckily Robert and Sasaki pulled thru in a tie break and we were all stunned to see Datin carry the balls off the court, indicating they miraculously recovered and also won by tie break!

Jim Arthur and Jimmy Boon sailed thru their match 9 - 0 and Koay and Chee also won as did Naidu and Paul Lim...

After having narrowly escaped disaster... we began to relax as the beer began to flow and our visitors enjoyed a nice buffet dinner with plenty of food, beer and karaoke.

We certainly look forward to visiting Hat Yai next year.... or next week!

To see more photos of this event, click here

Courts 1 - 4 are OPEN!

Our resurfacing project for courts 1 - 4 was completed on 25 September 2008 and the courts are once again open for members to play. As you can see from this photo, we decided to go with dark green courts, a light green outer court and white lines... This makes it quite a bit easier to make line calls when the yellow ball strikes the white line, unlike the yellow lines on our old courts.

The courts are new and 19 mm thick, so the first thing you notice is that they feel very much more "cushiony" and comfortable to your joints than our old courts which have worn down to around 5 mm and now feel almost like hard courts. This difference in thickness , as well as the fresh sand dressing, makes a slow ball sit up a bit more... so you have plenty of time to hit it... thus, you may describe this surface behaviour as "slow"... However, the material has a lower coefficient of friction than the old courts, and if you whack a serve or a strong shot with a lot of pace, the ball will "shoot" ...the surface can be surprisingly fast and grass-like in that situation... Also, you can "slide" quite well on these courts, even though they are brand new and yet to be "broken in".

Before we laid the new courts, I was a bit concerned about this "slippery-ness" when playing on the courts when they are wet, but I played in the rain yesterday and was delighted to find the footing to be very sure and I had absolutely no sense of it being too slippery or dangerous to play on when wet. Only effect was slightly more tendency of the ball to shoot as described above...

The other thing I was delighted to see was that the ponding situation has been improved immensely on courts 1 - 4... During yesterday's heavy rain, courts 1 - 4 were still playable with very little ponding, while courts 5 - 8 were completely flooded... The only thing i noticed about the new courts is that they have a slight tendancy to trap air and form sort of a blister or bubble underneath...but this is not dangerous, and it quickly disappears about the same time the court drains completely. Finally, members should be aware that the sand dressing will be an ongoing process. The heavy rains recently will distribute the sand unevenly... We are aware of this and have scheduled the next round of sand dressing for 15 Oct 2008. This will be done during the day and should not affect your club nite play...

Come out and have a hit on the new courts and tell me what you think of them... I'll be delighted to hear your comments!

PSC vs CRC Taiping

As part of the annual series of games, we hosted CRC Taiping for tennis on 27 Sept 2008. Our Wong Poh Lam was our Captain of the day for this event... The CRC Taiping team was a bit short handed... so we were gifted two walkovers ... We lost in our first pair, and our mixed doubles pair...but we went on to win the rest of the matches for a final score of 5 - 2.