It has been a while since I've had to get up at 6:41 a.m. to get ready to head to the courts. But this morning we were out the door by eight. Headed south on I75 two hours to The Oaks Club in Osprey, Florida.
After winding our way through the luscious green golf course of the Oaks Club, we came to the courts. Natalie practiced with Chi Chi Scholl, her potential dubs partner for this one. Potential because if their 424 ranking wasn't good enough they would have jockeyed at the last moment for replacements.
At 11:40 a.m., I made my to the tournament desk to see what the dubs entry list looked like. With 20 minutes till the deadline, noticed that a few more teams signed in after "our team". One of them being ranked 9th in the world.....yes....9th in the world. Why are they at a 50K??? They are out of the Sony and needed something to do of course, while they wait to go to Charleston.
Anyway, during that 20 minutes....the dubs "cut off" went from 690 to 494 with 5 minutes to go to deadline. It was a frenzy of players and coaches trying to find partners with good enough rankings to "bump" another team out in order to get into the draw. With 20 SECONDS to spare, Fichman crossed off her original partner's name and added another name. By doing so, she went from first alternate team to like 13th team "in". Of course, the team she bumped by making the changes were present and not too happy. The drama of it all. For the record....Tony Jones....you would have loved it!
With all the last 5 minute changes the ranking "cut off" finished at 454. Which is extremely tough dubs for a 50K tourney. Mel Oudin didn't get make the draw with her partner, they were second alternate. The last three spots were filled with Americans as wild cards. Crazy indeed!
Having said all that, I'm very happy and proud to say that Natalie and Chiara Scholl will play third on tomorrow. They will play the 459th tourney ranked team of Veronica Cepede Royg (PAR) and Ines Ferrer-Suarez (ESP).
Natalie helps Billie with the draw line up for dubs, she picked her own destiny.
