Because the heating in the club tended to create a ‘sweating’ condition on the concrete floors, the OKC club wisely chose to turn on the A/C to avoid potentially dangerous footing conditions. Most players adjusted very quickly to the cool clime, but yours truly just had to be different and take some time to get fired up.

In the  U1900 event, I was in a RR of four with Britt Salter (1754), Chris Agimudie (1610) and Yee Yang (1573) – lots of familiar faces here! For you loyal readers of these reports, you’ll recall I’ve been touting Chris and Yee as two of our brightest up and coming stars. They did not disappoint in this event! Yee sliced through the competition like a hot knife through butter, with a combination of ferocious wide kill shots and timely defensive counters that saw him win the RR. Chris, though suffering at least in his match against me from tight triceps, easily dominated yours truly with a smooth rip drive/kill attack and well positioned pushes. Britt played smart positioning, consistent rallies and took advantage of anything up. As you may have surmised by now, I went 0-3, and was feeling rather discouraged (to take nothing away from the fine play of my opponents!). I’d like to thank Chris for offering me encouragement and wisdom to get past this temporary down!

Yee made it to the semifinals of the U1900, a place he will be at again (and surpass I’m sure) in the coming years!

There’s an old adage that says “Never change a winning game plan”, the compliment to which is “Think about changing a losing game plan”. So I did some thinking before the Opens, and decided to put on my warmups to keep my extremities toasty, and this seemed to be just the right move for me!

I was seeded 3rd of 4 in the Open RR, with Britt Salter, John Raunikar (1674), and a player named (if I recall correctly) Shaolong (who’s rating I could not find). I faced a confident Britt first. But this time I was able to play with more movement, tempo and touch and managed a -6,7,5,9 upset over my staunch opponent. John Raunikar had not played a tournament in 2 years, so was (as he admitted) a bit rusty. He demonstrated fine rally strokes, but had a bit of trouble reading/returning my serves so I managed a 5,11,-6,8 win over him. Shaolong, a penholder, surprised me by having a much better backhand than forehand, so I did the reverse of what I usually do against penholders and focused 90% on his forehand, resulting in a 4,6,6 win.

Shocker of shockers, I move on! To face the indomitable Don Beckstrom (1957) in a single elimination quarterfinal, who combined beautifully low, well placed touch pushes on his anti backhand with powerful forehand kills of most everything I could dish up, to cruise to a 3-0 over me.

Meanwhile, Bob Kyker (1669) and I paired up in the U3600 doubles RR (12 teams, 4 RRs of 3 teams each). Bob and I have played doubles together for many years, but this year we changed strategy a bit, with me receiving serve on my FH instead of BH side. This has helped, as anything long I can loop/drive with good angle crosscourt, and I’ve been working on my FH pushes so they are more consistently low and well placed. 

Our first opponents were David Hash (1581) and new up-and-comer Linda Piatt. Linda has only been playing ‘serious’ table tennis for a few months, but she has a remarkably good sense of touch and position for that amount of time played! We managed a 3-0 win in the official play, then in practice David and Linda went on to beat us 3-2! So with a little seasoning I think they will have some great success in the future.

Our next RR pitted us against two fine players, Cheung and Huang (spelling? Hard to read Larry Kesler’s writing sometimes lol! Sorry didn’t get their ratings). This was a very close match, as they had powerful forehands and punished anything even slightly up. They were having some issues with my serves, and my drives off the serve and backhand kills were (frequently enough) going where I wanted them to. Bob was moving well, and his long pips BH chops/pushes, bruising reverse BH kills, and potent forehand loop/kills helped carry the day (-7, 10, -7, 9, 9). This 5 game match was to be a sign of things to come…..

In the doubles finals (RR of four), we were pleasantly surprised to see an all-Tulsa contingent! I won’t go through the excruciating details of each match we played, but suffice it to say we went to 5 in all 3 matches, losing a heartbreaking fifth in each case at 8 or 9 to the eventual winner’s Nick/Syd Agimudie (gratz Syd on a final match-winning smash against Chris/Alex!), 2nd placers Chris Agimudie and Alex Tupas, and 3rd place finishers Tao Wang (1615, who has spent his away from club time very profitably, fine movement to setup his devastating forehand kills!) and partner Ke Liu (couldn’t find rating, but as he won the U1900s it should be pretty good lol) who could get to anything and return it with vigor.

So although we didn’t win any of our final doubles matches, we old folk definitely made the younger crowd work hard for their success (not a bad philosophy, come to think of it).

Other event results (keep an eye out for the official OKC postings) I managed to catch:
Nick Agimudie (2157) came in 2nd in the Opens to the powerful, consistent Winfred Addy, 4-2 (played best of 7).
Kelly Boyce (1938) won the O50s, with Bob Kyker finishing a strong 2nd.
Ke Liu (a student at Tulsa University) won the U1900s.
Yee Yang won the bronze in the U1900s.
Alex Tupas, in his first tournament, won his U1900 initial RR to make the playoffs.
All in all, an excellent representation of Table Tennis from our Tulsa compadres!

Again, a well run tournament by Britt Salter, Larry Kesler, David Hash, and the other fine members of our esteemed club in OKC! Keep up the good work, the good pizza, and the good humor!  End