I didn't surface until very late today, due to the long day yesterday. I wanted to go and see Juan Carlos Ferrero's match at 11am but I physically wasn't able to. The weather forecast said it was going to be another hot day, albeit with a bit of rain. So we didn't bother to take any jumpers or anything with us and finally got out to the tennis centre around 1.30pm. It wasn't all that hot, but it was pleasant enough. I managed to catch the end of Juan Carlos' match against Danai Udomchoke, although unfortunately he lost. We then went out to see a bit of Nicolas Mahut's match against Mardy Fish and as usual, all the French coaches plus a few players like Julien Benneteau and Nicolas Devilder were there to watch. I think it's great the way the French players support each other...none of the other nationalities seem to do it as much as them. I had to laugh at some of the Mardy Fish fans though...one had come with an inflatable rubber fish used in swimming pools around their face...and the other had a cardboard cut out of a fish and was dressed as a sailor. Ten points for creativity! After that I met up with a few friends and we watched a bit of the match between Marc Gicquel and Andy Roddick on the big screen. It was then time for lunch, and also time to start queuing up at Vodafone Arena for Marat Safin's match against Dudi Sela. When we finally got in, we stayed for the first set which was actually quite boring...we left after that, although we later heard the match went to 5 sets after Marat had yet another brain fade. I went back to the other side to see a bit of Guillermo Garcia Lopez v Mario Ancic, but the weather had turned to complete crap...so much for being hot...it was freezing! And I had no jumper and was still feeling tired from yesterday so I decided to call it a day, especially as there was nothing much else I wanted to watch.
At night, I went to pop my head in at my friend's restaurant and she told me that Carlos Moya, Flavia Pennetta, Feliciano Lopez and Rafael Nadal were in for dinner. You could see them a bit from the outside, and then some other diners asked to have their photo taken with Rafael haha. My friend, who had been a supporter of Rafa in 2003/2004 (along with me), was serving their table and said she noticed he had become more arrogant. I can't comment on it myself, as I never had anything to do with him, but if that is the case, it is sad, though unfortunately inevitable. When players have a lot of success at a young age, the money and fame go to their head and they start to take fans and support for granted. Media doesn't help either, since they produce all the hype, but it really is sad when players change like that...and I've seen it happen all too often. In any case, that was all there was to report for tonight, as I went to bed soon after.
Thursday 18 January 2007
This was to be my last day at the tournament. After yesterday, we decided to go fully prepared with jumpers and towels, especially as the weather forecast said it was going to be a lot cooler. And you can guess what happened. Yes, it was stinking hot, so we had to lug a bagful of jumpers around for the entire day while it was 35 degrees celcius. One day the weather will be consistent in Melbourne. There wasn't much to watch for a start, so we just wandered around and saw a few games of the doubles match between Jose Acasuso/Martin Vassallo Arguello and Mark Knowles/Daniel Nestor. I stopped to take a few photos of Stanislas Wawrinka's practice, as well as put my head in at Show Court 3 where Juan Ignacio Chela was playing Jarkko Nieminen, but it was so hot, we decided to go and hog the airconditioning in Rod Laver Arena and grab a bite to eat. After the quick refreshment, it was time to head out to court 7 where Dmitry Tursunov was playing Max Mirnyi. It was SO hot...there was absolutely no breeze, we were sitting in direct sun and it was in the mid 30s. My friends and I were fanning ourselves with whatever we could find and almost passed out...until...Dmitry dropped his ice pack and all the ice cubes fell out just in front of us! So we scrambled to pick them up and rub them on ourselves....oh the relief! Dmitry was cruising along nicely, leading by 2 sets to love. At 2-2 and break point on Mirnyi's serve, Mirnyi hit a clearly long ball that was overruled as in by umpire Carlos Bernardez. Dmitry had a bit to say to the umpire and we were afraid it would make him lose his concentration. Actually in his next 2 service games he was in danger of being broken, but he managed to hang tight and force the tiebreak, which he won. After the match he was sooo nice with the hordes of fans who wanted autographs and photos (myself included). Despite the heat, he was so patient and must have taken about 20 minutes to make sure everyone got what they wanted. He talked to everyone and was really genuine, which is great to see. He seems so down-to-earth and human, compared to a lot of the other players who are kind of like robots. They live in a bubble far removed from normal daily life and you sometimes get the impression they don't really know how to act with normal non-tennis people. That is not the case with Dmitry, I am happy to say. So I took a photo with him and then went off with my friends for a bit. Later, I met up with some other friends and we went to watch some Frenchie doubles. First was Marc Gicquel/Florent Serra against Gilles Simon/Davide Sanguinetti, which was quite quick. Up next on that court was meant to be Olivier Patience/Sebastien Grosjean against Radek Stepanek/Mahesh Bhupathi, but Sebastien Grosjean had been playing a 5 set singles match that had only finished a few minutes before, so the match was delayed to give him some more time to rest, and it was moved to another court. When the players did finally come out to play, we thought the French pair would just tank it, since it was so late and Sebastien would be very tired. And our thoughts were confirmed when they lost the first set 6-1, to the delight of the raucous Indian fans that were packed into the court. However, the Frenchies fought back and actually took the next set in a tiebreak, so that was the tanking idea out the window. They actually had chances to break in the third, but in the end it was Stepanek and Bhupathi who prevailed.
By now it was around 11.30pm and time to say goodbye to Melbourne Park for 2007. I was leaving a bit earlier than I have in previous years, but since I plan to attend some more tournaments this year, I decided it was better to only stay a few days in Melbourne to save up for the upcoming trips! I hope you enjoyed my reports and photos from the Australian Summer and look forward to bringing you some more throughout the year!