Arcadia, CA
On March 23rd, we took an early morning flight to Arcadia, CA. We landed in LA at 9am which gave us plenty of time to pick up our rental car, get situated at our home for the week, and also get a good hit in at the tournament site. The tournament was at a beautiful location with an amazing view of the mountains. Flying in on Sunday gave us a chance to also get a solid hit on Monday before the tournament began on Tuesday.
After seeing the competition at this tournament we were excited when we heard we got into the draw. With Indian wells coming up, numerous high ranked players (such as the 45th in the world) were playing this tournament as a warm up.
We don’t have the best of luck when it comes to where we are placed in the draw. We had a tough matchup in the round of 16 for our first match back. We faced the 3rd seeds who were ranked 150 & 500. At the start of the match we were slightly caught off guard by the level of tennis. It’s been a couple of months since we last competed! We quickly went down 0-3 due to the power and consistency of these girls. However, we found a way to adjust faster than we normally can matching their pace and aggressiveness. We lost the 1st set 3-6 and were feeling confident going into the 2nd set. In the 2nd, we had winning opportunities at 3-2 40-30. Without going into too much detail, the referee on our court ended up costing us that game with some of the worst calls we’ve ever experienced in our pro career. We kept fighting and went down 4-5 where the ref once again cost us a crucial point. We ended up losing the match 3-4, 4-6 feeling frustrated with how close we were.
Despite the loss, we were very pleased with how we played. Madison’s leg was feeling good, allowing her to move better than usual, and resulting in us playing even better than we did last year. This team played extremely well causing us to have to pull out our best tennis. Looking at all of our stats, we were neck and neck on everything except our ability to convert break points (1 of 7) which is something we need to work on. This team went on to win the tournament and beat the 45th in the world in the finals. This shows us how close we are to winning one of these tournaments, if only we could catch a break in the draw. Time to get back to the drawing board and prepare for the next tournament at the end of March. Our total trip cost was $1463 while our total earnings was $156. Our tournament recap will be posted on our website soon!
Total Points Earned: 1
Price Breakdown:
Flight: 390 x 2 = $780
Bags: 35 x 4 = $140
Rental Car: $273
Groceries: $120
Gas: $110
Total Cost: $1,463
Total Earnings: $156
