Good showing at Vail King of the Mountain

This past weekend was the big King of the Mountain event in Vail. I played with Matt A. , whom I met up in Vail on Friday, where we spent a little time on the court getting to know each others preferences. The men's open had a good sized field, with a draw of 29 teams, mostly Colorado locals but included a couple of national team players and others.
Our day started early Saturday where we were surprised with the news that our first couple of matches would be played in another town, 15 miles away. Even worse, we had to play my friends from Santa Fe, Thomas and Matt. Well, we packed it up and drove over to the remote courts. With a lake on one side and railroad tracks on the other, not the best setup for two courts. What's worse was the condition of the courts, real rocky and whatnot. Hopefully the TD's will go out to the court in advance next year and make sure they are in a good, safe condition for the players. We beat Thomas and Matt in a shakey first game. Our second game was against the 8 seed (we were 9 seed) of Eric and Ryan. They were solid. We were in our third game tied at 9 when I dropped to dig a ball and in cutting back wound up slicing off a good portion of the bottom of my big toe. A little tape job and I was back on the court, but we were out of it and they finished the match running 5 of the next 7 points. We got the unfortunate news that somebody in Vail had a heart attack while playing on one of the grass courts. Found out later he was doing well and was flown to a hospital in Denver.
Back to Vail and we played a couple more games in the double elim tournament, beating Ryan and Chad and another team. Thomas and Matt pulled it together and won a couple matches before going down at the end of the day. We came back on Sunday and played Wes and Lucas, a very solid team. We managed to pull a win there, and then proceded to beat the next team we played. We got to Jason and Paige, a very strong team from Denver. Jason actually hooked me up with my partner from the tourney. Fortunately, the more we played the better we got and we were able to take them down. This put us into the semifinals of the loosers bracket where we had to face the team that beat us the previous day, Ryan and Eric. They played very well dueing the game to 25 and we began to run out of steam. Thus ended our run through the loosers bracket, but not before walking away with a 4th place finish. It was my personal best at the event, so I'm not complaining. The big payout for the event: we got an old t-shirt. Oh well...