The Longest Day was too long already after only about a dozen hands at the Bridge Center of Buffalo for my Sunday morning partner Judie Bailey. Only 15 more boards to go, I reassured her.
She thought it was the air conditioning, or rather the
lack of it, that was sapping her energy. It didn't help that we were playing in
an 11-pair Howell movement, which disoriented us and everybody else by taking most of us to a different table for every round. Plus we were one of the pairs that didn’t
get a sit-out.
Nevertheless, Judie soldiered on through. When cool
breezes began to reach us in the final round, she started feeling better, just
in time for a total drubbing by Mike Ryan and Judy Graf, who gave us three
straight bottom boards. We were at 56.77% when we arrived at their table and
50.93% when we walked away.
Amazingly, that calamity took us down only one peg in the final standings, from first in the B stratification to second. This being part of the District 5 Sectional Tournament at the Clubs (STaC), I was grateful to collect some fraction – 0.83 – of a silver point.
For the six-table afternoon session, fresh partner Florence Boyd and I sat North-South for the entire game and started
out like demons. In our first set of four hands against Ruth Nawotniak and
Joyce Frayer, we won 14.5 out of a possible 20 match points.
The thrill of that victory didn't last long. Next visitors
to our table – Joyce Greenspan and Jo Nasoff-Finton – slapped us down with two
bottom boards. One of the other hands was a pass-out. We never
bounced back. Our final score was 44.17%, second from the bottom North-South,
ninth out of 12 pairs overall.
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