IC Week Le Touquet 2019

Following on from a great week in Berlin in 2017, we travelled to Le Touquet for IC week 2019 looking forward to some high quality tennis, meeting old friends and making new ones. We were tremendously looked after by our hosts in Le Touquet with every need looked after. A big thanks to Marine Piriou, Phillipe Gros, Thierry Pham and the rest of the French IC. Thanks must also go to Le Touquet tennis club for letting us use their fantastic facilities and superb clay courts.

Our team consisted of Fergus O Connell, David Gardiner, Richard Collins, Niall Murphy, Anne Fleming and Lisa Lawlor. The format consisted of two open mens players and two over 45’s with the ladies having one open player and one over 45.

Arriving on the first day we realised that we were up against some incredibly strong teams in both the mens and womens draws. Many of the teams had world ranked players with numerous players formerly ranked in the top 100. The draw took place in the city hall in front of the teams and local dignitaries. Our womens team were drawn against Great Britain, the eventual champions,  whilst the men were drawn against the defending champions, Germany. Two tough matches to start! 

Both teams fought hard on the first morning but unfortunately the results didn’t go our way. Special mention to David Gardiner and Lisa Lawlor who bought played against former top 100 players, with Dave playing Michael Berrer who has beaten Rafael Nadal. The standard of tennis was incredibly high and lots of lessons learnt. Unfortunately the men went down 3-1 after the singles and the ladies 2-0 down. We moved into the consolation in both draws and looking forward to fresh challenges. That evening consisted of a lovely dinner with all fellow IC’s overlooking the ocean. Most enjoyable.

With the number of teams in the draw, it meant that both the men and women had a rest day on the Tuesday with multiple trips to the physio to patch up bodies that weren’t used to grinding on the red clay. 

We arrived on the Wednesday ready for battle against the Mexicans for the men and Belgium the ladies. Some epic singles battles ensued across the courts with great wins for Lisa and Fergus against some strong players. Richard and Niall both playing former world ranked players in high quality matches. Lisa and Anne then had a doubles to win the consolation but unfortunately lost a high quality match 7-5, 7-6. Congrats to the Belgian team for a great win. 

Onto the final day and a battle against Luxembourg for the mens team. With a number of the team nursing injuries sustained over the course of the previous 3 days we lost another tight match with Dave losing a tight match to a Davis Cup player 12-10 in the third match