Thursday Report
Not much exciting happened today, sorry to say
So you'll just have to endure more of my lame (and today, tired) rambling and the pics tomorrow...
So I get to the tennis around 10:30am and it's a lot busier just driving around UCLA than on Tuesday. There is a line at the parking garage of a few cars - people are honking (this is LA
). I finally get to the gate to pay and the lady collecting money starts asking me about the tennis. More specifically she says "So, are the guys hot?" I'm like, lady, there are cars lined up behind me and people are honking, and you're asking me if the tennis players are good-looking (btw she was middle-aged just in general strange
), and she asks me more than once, to the point where it's really getting creepy and what I wanted to say was "dude, go up and see for yourself" but instead I deflected this line of questioning by asking where i should park today. Anyway. That was rather strange indeed
I want to start by saying that I love children. I think they are wonderful and I want to have some of my own one day. I think they are much smarter than many adults give them credit for and are in general just darn cute. But today was Kids Day at the tournament. Hundreds of young screaming hyper children
So, when I got there, there was an event for the kiddies on the grandstand court - Wayne Bryan was hosting it and it involved a lot of kids and t-shirts and Malisse and Justin Gimelstob. Which was all fine, until the event ended, then there was a DELUGE OF CHILDREN
(I found out later that a lot of the kids just came for the morning event and didn't even stay to see any tennis. That made me sad
)
Anyway, I decided I would be "safest" in the stadium, which they opened at 11. So I went in and a bunch of doubles players were practicing (I will ask for identification help when the pics upload tomorrow). At 11:30, Roddick came out, which was pretty surprising since I had never seen him practice in the morning before a night match before. He hit for a half hour and looked pretty good. Where the deep flat forehands are in matches is beyond my comprehension, but they do exist
I heard he went somewhere else and practiced for another half hour right away.
Found a shady spot up in the corner for the first match and watched all of Del Potro/Stoppini. It was never close. Stoppini managed to hold on throughout most of the first set but at the end finally Del Potro took over. Just as he was in the practice I saw the other day, he was crushing the ball and the only reason he dropped serve early in the 2nd is b/c I think he just got lazy for a few points there, but he immediately righted the ship so good for him. Early in the match he hit a pretty spectacular passing shot slap winner off a smash. it's pointless to try to describe it, but it was really amazing. Just take my word for it
Then I watched the first set of Young/Gicquel. As I said in the match result thread I still cannot wrap my head around how Young could have beaten Tommy so easily the other night. Young is still pretty bad. Maybe he just played the best match of his career the other night, I dunno. He's definitely grown (the stats they showed on the big screen during the warmups says he is 6 feet now), and he was serving in the 120s, but he just makes soooooo many errors. So I left near the end of the first set, confident that the match was not going to change... and it didn't
Watched some doubles, which is always fun. Lopez and Verdasco were warming up for their doubles match while Safin and Kunitsyn played Isner and Cerretani (who really is a pretty good doubles player from very close to where I grew up, so that's cool
).... Verdasco's ankle wasn't even taped soooooo I guess that's a good thing and hopefully that means it's not serious. I got one picture of him by accident that is probably one of my favorite pics i've ever taken, I had to wait til i got home to see if it really came out, and it did, yay!
Time for the match I was most waiting for - Moya/Delic. Moya came out pretty flat, but Delic was really on fire. Except for missing a fair number of backhands into the net, Amer was just killing it from all over the court. Aces, volleys, return winners, even a lob or two, he was just in the zone. I figured it'd get harder for him, and thought for sure that when he blew the break in the 2nd set that he'd be a goner, but he hung in pretty well and fought hard. Moya really steadied himself and started making fewer errors and serving a lot better. In the second set tiebreak, Moya hit a really incredible passing shot to get it back on serve and he managed to sneak it out. Unfortunately I left and missed the third set
But I am very happy for Amer, who was gaining crowd support as the match went on. I think people were really appreciating the game he was playing and that he was fighting so hard. Ironically for me, the first time I saw Amer play was when he played Moya at the USO a few years ago and I instantly became a fan b/c of his game and attitude, so cool
During the third set of Delic/Moya, I got some food and watched some practice. Roddick tried to fool everyone by hitting in the Grandstand court instead of the on-site practice court, but you can't fool a bunch of hormonal teenage girls, it's like they could smell and find him
So, he just warmed up for a bit, but the amusing thing was the ensuing hit-and-giggle between John Roddick and Doug Spreen, Andy's trainer. I think poor Dougie is not so good at tennis, so John was playing lefty
I found this all rather amusing, but it's probably just me
Made my way to the stadium to see Courier and Krickstein play their Legends exhibition thingy. Not much to say here since I didn't stay long. One funny part was when Krickstein didn't like a call and Courier was all, so, challenge? Of course, I don't think Krickstein had ever had the opportunity to use Hawk-eye so he was a bit confused, it was amusing but otherwise
I was hoping to see McEnroe hit before leaving, but I got tired and didn't feel like waiting, so I left.
So that's it. boring mostly. Well, good tennis, but it's hard to describe that so yeah
and thanks again nizelegz for everything
pics coming tomorrow
LA Reports, Pics, Videos (Thursday Report Post 91, pics now up)
Re: LA Reports, Pics, Videos (Tuesday Report in Post 70, pics post 76)
to (in no particular order): BryOns
| Mandy | MarTy | Isner | Dent | Querrey | Baghdatis | Delic | Oli | N&o | Gasquet | Ferrero | Levine | Malisse | LUX | Melzer | Moya | Nishikori | Haas | Grosjean | Ancic | Mathieu | Calleri | Bolelli | Sela | Blake | more...
I know nothing without you, so you are therefore the best. Sim. 
Some of their words are different so yeah 
