EASTER MONDAY

You all enjoy playing with your usual partners; next Monday, you will have the chance to play with several different ones. Look around the Club, & imagine how lucky you might be! The happy event of a Club Friendly Mixed Tournament has been announced, & I promised to remind you of this. Many of you know the way it works. First you have to sign up in the Office (hurry! numbers may be limited!); you pay €20 to include lunch, & you arrive promptly at 9.30 am, Monday the 5th April, well-equipped to flash those balls back & forth. You will probably have to play at least 5 rounds, with a different partner each time. Matches are abbreviated to a total of 8 games, or something like that: watch out that the games are not announced 'no-add': you will be told all this when you arrive well on time.

Latest news of our Men's First Team, captained by one of our teachers, Franck Burgos, is that they came up against a very strong team in Menton last Sunday, & lost the encounter 2/5. This was the last match of the season - fortunately, the previous weekend they had won two matches magnificently at 8/0. In the Saturday match against 'Les Acacias', our Quentin Meges was able to help, back from his tennis & studies in San Fransisco for a few days. Then on the Sunday against 'Nice Mediterranée', they had our former teacher, & Monaco Davis Cup Team Captain, Manu Heussner with them.

Alternate heavy rain & bright sun, has encouraged early-flowering wild plants in the surrounding area. Look again at my tennis site to remind you of what you may find. I will mention here first, the beautiful wild anemones, & then a plant, with the curious common name of 'sun spurge', which has been present in the grounds for several weeks now. It's inflorescence contains several male organs of one stamen each, surrounding one female structure. There are no petals. It must have been an early development in the evolution of flowering plants; that is going back about 135 million years. It's genus is Euphorbia, see my photo above, along with one of two lonely anemones. Careful about examining the 'spurge', when you break the stem there is a sticky white latex, which may be irritant, & surely poisonous.

Good luck in the tournament!