Croatian International

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Another tough weekend has passed. As I mentioned in my past few emails, I have not been feeling at my best or fittest of all time. I made a conscious effort to begin now to focus more time and energy on getting back to my former level. At the German Open, I felt fitter and stronger than the week prior to that. At the Croatian International just this past weekend, I felt ok, though I was a little bit worn down from the training and I definitely wasn't peaking for this one, as was shown by my results. I won my first match against a young Finnish player, 25-23 and 21-13. Right from the start I knew it was going to be a battle. I didn't have the usual feeling of being able to explode around the court, and so I just tried to be steady and coast at the speed I could go. The same applied to my secound round match against Jan Frohlich of the Czech Republic. I've known Jan for the past 8 years and we have trained together many times; we were both living in Denmark for several years, playing at the same club there, and now he lives in Switzerland, where I spend a fair bit of my time as well...We know each other's games very well and I knew it was going to be a battle! What a battle it was! We had HUGE rallies for the most part, and we grinded each other down to nothing by the end. I won the first game 21-16, he won the next 21-15 and the third was a thriller. We were even for a bit, until about 5-all, when he started pulling away. He got up to about 11-6 and then 15-8 and then 18-12, and finally he was leading 20-16. I put everything into these last few rallies and caught up to 19-20, but unfortunately couldn't close the gap enough to take the match. He won it 21-19...Though I was disappointed to lose another tight one, I am happy that my current training, though making me fatigued at the present time, will be making me fitter in the long run.

Stefan Wojcikiewicz and myself are in Zurich this morning, but heading to Basel today for the Swiss Open. We are both have to play qualification matches to get into the main draw. Our matches are tomorrow night, so we will have one more night to get prepared!

All the best for now!

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Andrew

ANDREW ROBERT DABEKA

(c) 613.222.3302

Previous emails:Mar 2, Feb 20, Feb 2, Aug 23, Aug 18, Aug 15, Aug 13, Aug12, Aug 10, Aug 8, Aug 7, Aug 5, Aug 3, July 13, July 12, July 2, May 13, May 11, Apr 19, Apr 6, Mar 30, Mar 25, Mar 13, Mar 6, Feb 19, Jan 23, Jan 21, Dec 14, Nov 25, Nov 17, Nov 1, Oct 24, Oct 9, Sept 29, Sept 8, Sept 1, Aug 14, Jult 31 and July 10, 2007

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