Golden Gate Open Complete

My trip to San Francisco is finished now, after 6 days in the San Francisco Bay Area I�m happy to be home, but that isn�t to say that I didn�t have a good time, because it was a lot of fun.

Laura and I arrived on Tuesday morning, and went to our hotel in the heart of downtown San Francisco. At $89 a night the hotel seemed like quite a bargain, but when we arrived we realized what $89 gets you. Hotel Fusion was very nice, but the room was almost as small as the one I had in Tokyo at the Thomas/Uber Cup (like a big walk in closet), and had no air-conditioning, but it did have a really nice flat-panel TV.

We basically just browsed the shops and walked around downtown the first couple of days, as well as going to check out the Golden Gate Bridge (how could we go to the Golden Gate Open without seeing the Golden Gate Bridge?).

On Thursday we took the CalTrain down to Menlo Park where the Golden Gate Badminton Club is located and played drop-in against some of the members to get used to the courts and get a bit of a warm up. It was a good thing because neither of us had played in almost a week.

We checked out of our hotel Friday morning and switched to the Sheraton Gateway San Francisco Airport Hotel, about 15 minutes drive ($40 taxi ride) away from the GGBC. We went to the club around noon to check in and I had my first match at 1:30pm. I played a young guy that I think was from the Bay Area named Arnold Setiadi. He was pretty good, had a really good jump smash. I really had trouble adapting to his style, and totally played into his attacking game. I lost 17-14, 15-10, and almost could have lost 15-0 in the second if I hadn�t woken up, because I think I was down 10-0 at one point in time. I was pretty mad with that loss because I really thought I should have beaten him (he�s probably on the same level as our top u16 kids like Avish Makol or Martin Giuffre), but anyway he played better, so he earned it. I played in the singles consolations and won, maybe that is better than making it to the semi-finals and losing to Eric Go 15-0, 15-0, at least it is less embarrassing.

Laura and I lost our first round of mixed but we played really well after that, and made it to the consolation final. Unfortunately after a lot of badminton, and not the best conditioning beforehand, we were extremely tired and sore for the final and lost in two straight games to a couple kids from the Bay Area. We played pretty well together, especially since I haven�t played mixed since 2001, and since Laura played less than a handful of times in the past year.

We met a lot of people while we were in San Francisco, and were amazed by how nice and helpful everybody was. Mike Yang the founder of GGBC was not as mean as Phil Allard told me he was (just kidding). Mike went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable, and got us a number of rides throughout the weekend. Big thanks to Mike and everybody who gave us rides (too many to mention in one article).

I also met Kwun from Badminton Central as he was one of the many photographers taking pictures throughout the weekend. Really nice guy, and he had a really nice camera too, especially for someone who only does photography as a �hobby�. I guess badminton and his new baby require the best camera.

I would definitely recommend all the Canadian players to come down to this tournament next year. It was a lot of fun, but I would recommend doing the following if you do come down:

1) Come on the Wednesday or Thursday, and then stay after the tournament: We came before the tournament, and because we wanted to see San Francisco, we stayed downtown which is pretty far from the GGBC. We weren�t able to practice unless we wanted to take CalTrain everyday, or convince someone to drive us. If you stay afterwards, you can do all the tourist stuff then, and you won�t get quite so tired.

2) Rent a car: Getting around in downtown San Francisco is not that tough, they have everything you want nearby, but if you want to go anywhere else in the Bay Area, having a car would be nice. The $40 cab fare everyday to the GGBC from our hotel added $80 a day to our tournament, we could have rented a car for $75 ($50 if you�re over 25 yrs old) and gone all over the place.

3) Don�t eat late in downtown San Francisco: We couldn�t find any restaurants downtown after 10:00pm!! I couldn�t believe it, there was nothing within walking distance of our hotel, in the heart of downtown,that was open after 10:00pm.

If you keep these things in mind, along with whatever other common sense travel tips you can think of, you should have a great time (we had a great time, even without considering these things).