Western Open (March 22-23, 2008)
May 9, 2008

By Sylvan Guo On Saturday March 22 I entered five events: U-18 Girls, U-16 Girls, U-22 Women, the Open, and U-2250 in the 2008 Western Open, a four-star tournament hosted by UC Berkeley. Although I started out nervous, I finally regained my vigor later during the tournament. Going into this tournament, my main goal was not only to have a positive outlook, but also to use the new technical skills that I learned in my matches.

Firstly, I warmed up with a friend and thirty minutes later, my name was called. My first event was U-18 Girls at 9 AM. There were only three girls, Lily Zhang, Natalie Sun and I. I was the second seed. Lily was first seed and Natalie was third seed. Lily played Natalie first and Lily won 3-1. I played Natalie next and won 3-1. Next I played Lily for first place, but came short and lost 3-0. Thus, I received U-18 Girls runner up.

Next I played the Open preliminary RR and U-2250 RR. Most of the players in these two events were adults. In the Open RR, I played two players, both of which were left-handed. I beat the third seed but lost to the first seed. In the U-2250 RR, I played three players lower than me and advanced to the playoffs. In the playoffs, I played my coach, Nelson Yu and lost a close game 3-1.

On Sunday, I played two more events and received U-16 girls runner-up trophy. This tournament was especially important for me because not only did I use my newly learned technical skills during the tournament, but I also got to watch some incredibly talented players battle it out for the Open Singles title.

Overall, I feel that even if my rating did not increase in this tournament I gained a lot of experience and played how I was trained to play. I learned much from this tournament, mostly being more patient and I felt that this tournament helped me learn a lot about my playing style and what I need to improve on.

I would like to thank my parents, for supporting me during the tournament, my coaches- Dennis Davis, Nelson Yu, and Stefan Feth, for coaching me during the tournament. Most importantly, I would like to thank Butterfly for being such a great sponsor!

 

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