Steamrolled By Rafa @ Indian Wells

Written by: on 5th March 2014
IW - court
Steamrolled By Rafa @ Indian Wells   |

Rafael Nadal was exiting the player’s restaurant when I almost got steamrolled by him today. He was rushing out to a practice court and he had his head down and was on a direct collision path with me and I stopped and waited to be bumped. But darn he looked up just in time to pass me! Oh well it was great to see him. He looks fantastic. Fit and a bit lighter which will help him with his knees.  Not sure he will like the gritty hard court surface here. But he is so adaptable one never knows. He was headed out to the practice courts and heaps of fans were screaming for autographs and for him to stop. More than any player in recent memory he stops when he can and signs for almost everyone waiting. Yup, for As many as 50-100 people.

Was that the highlight of my day? Heck no. It was non-stop fun. The site was buzzing. Super agents John Tobias and the current King of deals Max Eisenbud were around.

Asics Ryan Broccolo was running around in the world best shoes.

Nike was well represented by the famous Roy Sakaguchi (usually he is the guy sitting next to Robbie Federer).

K.T. Kim was making sure that all of his Solinco players had all their great string. We love Solinco! It’s a great company and it’s fearless leader KT is a Harvard man. Solinco has been a partner with 10sBalls since the site started 4 years ago.

We saw Scotty Davidoff. What a super guy. He coaches mostly men’s dubs players. He practically has coached them all in the last 20 years.

We saw Li Na holding court at the next table over from us with her hubby and physio Alex Stauber who is an awesome guy.

We did not see super coach Sven Groeneveld. He is the newest member of, “Team Sharapova” but we know he was on and off site all day. We will catch up tomorrow.

We saw our buddy chair umpire Mohamed Layani. It was big Mo and little Mo. Two great chair umpires. Big Mo being the best umpire we have ever seen. He has made one boo boo in 25 years. I think in a Raonic match when Milos said the ball didn’t hit him?

The great and talented Alex Ramsey had the pressroom in stitches with her stand up routine… She is so witty and so funny in the British Monty Python kind of way.

But I’m still thinking about my near miss with Rafael Nadal. It’s probably for the best we didn’t collide. I’d have lost that one and probably be in some sort of cast.

We sat with Xavier Malisse is in new job as coach, interesting after all these years of watching the X-Man play to see him coach Ruben Bemelmans to a win. Together as a dubs team they won the Los Angeles event @ UCLA before the undertakers killed off a 100 year tournament. Ruben played another lefty and it was a great match 7-6,7-5 over Mischa Zverev.

We were sorry to see the very talented Michaela Krajicek lose. She played a tough 3 setter and lost in a heartbreaker – tiebreaker in the third set.

We visited with old friend Donald Young Junior and his beautiful and smart mother Ilona. He gave us bracelets that say, “Young in motion ” or “YIM ” . He is a great kid with tons of talent. This is going to be a great year for him.

So ends another beautiful day @ the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens.

 

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