Tennis Warm-Up
We spent the first half of this weekend at Cincinnati. Cincinnati Masters qualifiers started this Saturday. We had a couple of free tickets thanks to my wife's employer. She could not come thanks to her employer so I went with a friend of mine to catch some pre-tournament action. We will be there next weekend also to watch the semis and the final.
Our tickets explicitely stated that they were valid for any court except the center court. But since not many fans wanted to brave the 100 degrees F to watch the qualifiers we could go to any court and sit wherever we pleased. We watched two center court matches from the best possible angle.
It's the third year for me at the Cincinnati Masters and I enjoy every moment of it, no matter who is playing. Last year has been the best experience so far with an Agassi-Roddick nailbiter that Agassi won.
The first qualifying match was between Croatian Ivo Karlovic and a Frenchman Gilles Simon. Karlovic is 6'10" with Roddickesque serve and Simon, who I learn is 6'0", looked so small in front of him that we dubbed him as "baccha". Karlovic had a powerful first set and won 6-3. Both of them held their own to go to tiebreaker in the second set and Simon won the tie-breaker 7-5. By this time, 90% of the audience were supporting Simon. His serve is not at all powerful but it has a lot of spin and kick to it. Karlovic sucked at net game. He would hit 4 out of 5 volleys in the net or wide. Simon kept his cool in the third set and won the match. Karlovic looked happy that the match ended, given the heat. It was tough to sit in the stands, playing must have been a torture. Simon won his second match and will play in the tournament starting Monday. (In the picture Karlovic is serving)
The second match was between Jan-Michael Gambill from US and Tomas Zib from Czech Republic. I wanted to watch Gambill as he features in my tennis game. He has won three ATP titles and has a very powerful serve. It was not his day. He lost in straight sets. We left the courts after Zib broke Gambill in the second set and Gambill threw his racquet for the third time. There was no way he could have won yesterday. (in the picture, Gambill is serving)
We returned home Saturday night and Sunday morning got a nasty shock. A rabbit had eaten off all our 6-8" rapidly growing flower plants. We have decided to grow the plants in pots in our patio and transfer them to the flower beds only after they are a little bit bigger and more importantly, when we put some sort of protective fence around the flower beds.
Our tickets explicitely stated that they were valid for any court except the center court. But since not many fans wanted to brave the 100 degrees F to watch the qualifiers we could go to any court and sit wherever we pleased. We watched two center court matches from the best possible angle.
It's the third year for me at the Cincinnati Masters and I enjoy every moment of it, no matter who is playing. Last year has been the best experience so far with an Agassi-Roddick nailbiter that Agassi won.
The first qualifying match was between Croatian Ivo Karlovic and a Frenchman Gilles Simon. Karlovic is 6'10" with Roddickesque serve and Simon, who I learn is 6'0", looked so small in front of him that we dubbed him as "baccha". Karlovic had a powerful first set and won 6-3. Both of them held their own to go to tiebreaker in the second set and Simon won the tie-breaker 7-5. By this time, 90% of the audience were supporting Simon. His serve is not at all powerful but it has a lot of spin and kick to it. Karlovic sucked at net game. He would hit 4 out of 5 volleys in the net or wide. Simon kept his cool in the third set and won the match. Karlovic looked happy that the match ended, given the heat. It was tough to sit in the stands, playing must have been a torture. Simon won his second match and will play in the tournament starting Monday. (In the picture Karlovic is serving)
The second match was between Jan-Michael Gambill from US and Tomas Zib from Czech Republic. I wanted to watch Gambill as he features in my tennis game. He has won three ATP titles and has a very powerful serve. It was not his day. He lost in straight sets. We left the courts after Zib broke Gambill in the second set and Gambill threw his racquet for the third time. There was no way he could have won yesterday. (in the picture, Gambill is serving)We returned home Saturday night and Sunday morning got a nasty shock. A rabbit had eaten off all our 6-8" rapidly growing flower plants. We have decided to grow the plants in pots in our patio and transfer them to the flower beds only after they are a little bit bigger and more importantly, when we put some sort of protective fence around the flower beds.
posted by Nikhil at 7:37 PM
1 Comments:
This sounds interesting. Looking forward to the update on the quarters, semis and finals. (of course, along with pics)
-Tennis lover
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