As the good old British rain kept on falling, Bea and I made our way to the grass courts of the (very posh - £500 a month membership fee) Edgbaston Priory Club on the southerly outskirts of Birmingham to enjoy the last few days of the DFS Classic.

The fun started as Bea arrived at Liverpool airport at around 10pm on the Thursday. We took a taxi to my university hall of residence and tried to get some sleep before a 6am wake up the next day!!

Catching the 7:30am train from Liverpool to Birmingham, we arrived in Edgbaston and checked into our hotel about an hour before play was due to commence. We left our bags in the hotel and were given directions by the very nice hotel receptionist on how to get to the courts, (“go through the dining room to the garden, walk to the end of the garden, turn right and the tennis club is straight ahead” – and he meant that literally!!)

So we walked through the garden where we were nearly attacked by the resident geese and arrived at the tennis courts with plenty of time to spare. We watched a few practise sessions, slept and chatted until it was time for play to begin.

Once play got underway we watched a little of Jelena Dokic against Eleni, (what a cool name! ;-)) Daniilidou before the rain began to fall yet again.

In the four hour rain delay that followed we succeeded in calling Bea’s sister Maria, (who kept hanging up before Bea got to speak to her – or so we thought at the time anyway!), a record 15 times, texting Mel and teasing her about Rennae Stubbs, (Mel your voicemail message made our weekend!! ;-)), and reading the very funny first chapter of Nathalie Tauziat’s book out loud – which amused us and created the new sayings “Je suis Nathalie Tauziat” and “J’ai été le numero 3 mondial!”, (if you haven’t read the book the first chapter tells the story of a French TV programme – you know the kind where they put celebrities in silly situations and try make them believe they’re real to see how they’ll react – where they had Nathalie go round to some guys apartment in Canada to see about signing a contract with Porsche, then the guys leaves her alone in the apartment under the pretext of going to fetch some documents, and while heºs gone the Canadian police arrive and ask if she’s the owner of the apartment, to which she says no and when they insist on coming in and throwing the guys furniture out of the window, good old Nathalie stands there imforming them, “I am Nathalie Tauziat! I’m the world number 13 and the French number 1” then starts to recite all her titles to them!! ;-) ;-))

When the rain finally cleared we watched the end of Jelena’s win over her Greek opponent, during which Bea made a big impression on a young Greek fan sitting about 4 rows ahead of us with her shouts of “Hela!”, (or however, you spell “come on!” in Greek!!) That boy couldn’t get enough of us! ;-)

We were then divided as to who to cheer for in Lisa Raymonds quarter final against Argentinean Clarisa Fernandez, the sensation of Roland Garros 2002. Clarisa seemed to be playing well to begin with, despite her totally inadequate amount of clothing – Clarisa if you’re reading this, please wear more clothes at Wimbledon – that outfit makes me feel cold! However, after about 6 games the Argentinean rising star conceded the match to her American opponent, due to a knee injury.

Nathalie Tauziat and Kimberly Po-Messerli’s doubles match was then postponed till the next day, as Anastasia Myskina vs. Magdalena Maleeva, which had begun on court 3, was finished on centre court before play was suspended on that court for the day.

Despite our cheering for Magdalena on behalf of our Bulgarian friends Ellie and Olga, Anastasia pulled out the close match in three sets.

Then came the real torture of the whole tournament!!! Since the only match left to be played that day was Nicole Arendt and Leisel Huber against Julie Pullin and Lorna Woodroffe Bea dragged me kicking and screaming to watch the British girls play!! The match went to 6-3, 7-6 (10-8) and the level of tennis was indescribably terrible. It’s not just that the tennis was bad, it was that it was so bad…there are no words to express just how bad that tennis was…. I think I have been traumatised for life!! ;-) Julie’s serve isn’t even a continuous action! She gets her racket to above shoulder height, pauses, then throws the ball up and completes the incredibly slow, soft, serve!!! I spent the match saying to Bea, “Magüi lost to that?!? How did Magüi lose to that?!? How?!?” The only amusement was the man, who obviously had no idea about tennis, who was standing in front of us saying, “Oh, this is so exciting! Come on girls! Wow! Julie and Lorna might actually win this! Oh, I’m a bag of nerves!!”

After the torture was over, we walked to the bus stop to take the bus into town to eat and there we made another new friend, a very funny old lady from Wrexham in North Wales, who travelled 2 ½ hours each way every day, (yes, you read that correctly!!), to watch the tournament – that’s dedication for you!!

We had a nice quiet meal in Pizza Hut then went to bed at about 10pm to recover from our early wake up!! ;-)

When we arrived on the Saturday, we checked the scoreboard and the order of play, and still traumatised from the terrible doubles match the night before, I jokingly suggested we reverse the score on the scoreboard so it showed Magüi beating Julie Pullin 6-4, 6-2, since I couldn’t take her having lost to Julie anymore! Then Bea began to work out how it could actually be done quickly and effectively! ;-) All we had to do now was wait till no-one was looking and put our plan into action!

First up we watched Nathalie Tauziat and Kimberley Po-Messerli’s quarter final win over Fujiwara and Sugiyama. Despite being 1-5 down in the first set, and Kimberley barely being able to hit serve in court, they fought back impressively to take the match 7-5, 6-4.

We then watched the singles semi finals, Anastasia Myskina vs. Nicole Pratt and Jelena Dokic vs. Lisa Raymond. Naturally as we were cheering for Nicole and Lisa, Anastasia and Jelena won!!

Following that Nathalie and Kimberley won their doubles semi final as Nicole Arendt injured herself and subsequently she and Leisel Huber had the retire after losing the first set 6-2. After the match I got Nathalie to sign my copy of her book, she smiled and asked if I could read French. I said yes, but with a dictionary! ;-)

We then waited around for everyone to leave before approaching the scoreboard. Once there, Bea grabbed Julie’s name, I grabbed Magüi’s and well, that was the last time the scoreboard ever showed Julie beating Magüi!!

BEFORE Caz & Bea

AFTER Caz & Bea

Then we sent my friend Al, (who lives in Birmingham), a text message and told him we were free to go out with him, whenever he was ready. Afterwards, went back to the hotel, got ready to go out, and finally met Al at 9pm in the town centre. First of all, as we hadn’t eaten, we went to “La Tasca”, a great Spanish restaurant, where whilst reading the menu to choose our tapas Bea noticed an error, which naturally led us to correct ‘patatas a la pobre’ to ‘patatas a lo pobre’ with a red pen!! Bea then ordered our tapas and drinks, and immediately made friends with the Spanish waiter, (put it this way, by the end of the evening, we knew where he was from, what he was doing in England and where he lived!! ;-)). Then the entertainment really began!!! You see, there was a group of drunk girls on a hen night, on one side of us, and a group of drunk guys on the other side of us. The girls called the guys over to them and asked them to stand on the table and strip for them – and they were actually drunk enough to do it…..completely!!!! ;-) The only complaints Bea and I had were that they could have been better looking, Al on the other hand, being male, was pretty much traumatised!!! ;-) ;-)

Later we went to a really nice bar by one of the canals ‘till closing time! It was great to meet up with Al again! ;-)

Sunday came and went pretty quickly really. Getting to the grounds really early, due to having had to check out of our hotel before 11am, we were asked by the guy at the Crêpe stand whether we would be “wandering around aimlessly again!”Both finals were pretty one sided and all the play was over in three hours, throughout which Bea periodically ran to the ice-cream stand to check out the score of the Spain vs. Ireland World Cup football match! The doubles final was slightly more competitive than the singles, but Kimberley was playing so badly that Nathalie was trying to cover the whole court to save Kim’s errors, and thus leaving the whole court open to passing shots, and also going for way too much on her own shots, to try to end the point quickly.

We amused ourselves throughout the day by approaching the scoreboard, (which the tournament organisers never realised had been tampered with!!), and saying, “I heard Julie Pullin had a good run here, I wonder who she lost to?!?!” Then finding the result we changed around on the scoreboard, pointing it out, and continuing, “Oh, that Magüi Serna girl!,” “ Oh that’s understandable then! She’s a great player!”, “didn’t she get to the Wimbledon quarter finals a few years back?!?! Wasn’t she the one who beat Mary Pierce there?!?!”, “Yeah, that’s her, and didn’t she make the Eastbourne final last year too?!?”, “Yeah, that’s her! She’s a great player, isn’t she?!?” ;-) ;-) And people believed us!!

All in all we had a great weekend at the DFS classic, despite apparently being stalked by Rennae Stubbs throughout, ;-), it could only have been better if Magüi had still been there when we got there and Patricia Tarabini had entered the draw!! Still, it was great to see Nathalie and Kimberly in the doubles final!! Maybe if Kimberley spends many hours on the practise court between now and Wimbledon, they may stand a chance of winning a few rounds at The Championships. ;-)

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