Columnists News
The office here is gloomy. The day is sunny and bright but no one feels sunny and bright. We all feel so disappointed that our hero Roger didn't walk away with his gold trophy. He saved a championship point. He pulled out five sets. He had his beautiful Mirka there.. He had the whole dream team.
Within minutes of the shock announcement that Andy Murray had chosen Amelie Mauresmo as his new coach, Andrei Chesnokov was having microphones stuck under his nose in the Players Lounge at Roland Garros.
I’d love to start tonight’s entry by saying both girls won, but that didn’t happen. With the mosquitoes leading 27-2, it’s been a rough day in the trenches.
The girls made the cut for this week’s tournament and qualifying starts tomorrow, although their intro to pro tennis comes with its attendant difficulties.
Ate a Teppan restaurant here in Mexico last night, the ones where you sit ten people to a table and the chef/Samurai warrior builds little onion volcanoes that he sets aflame so everyone at the table can “ooh” and “aah “as he burns off his eyebrows.
London. Wow. What a great city. One of my favs on earth. Grass court tennis. There is nothing finer. Queens was great. So was the Boodles @Stoke park , so was Birmingham and Eastbourne. But nothing on the planet can match the lawns of the mighty All England Lawn Tennis Club.
It’s rarely good when a person says, “I think I’m about to die.” But then, as a coach trying to expose younger players to the work required for professional advancement, those words are evidence of success.
Around 9:00 p.m. last night, one of my fifteen year-old students played her first professional tennis match. Meanwhile, the other fifteen year-old I brought with me, sat observing, learning and hoping to get into the draw as an alternate.
The girls didn’t get into the event. They are bummed out but energetic enough to rise early, so we are eating breakfast at 7:00 a.m. We plan a day in Play del Carmen before getting back to hit this….
Since it’s dusk and I’d like to enjoy a Caribbean sunset, I’m going to forego structure and just brain dump on this one.
This is week two of a multi-week segment of ITF professional circuit futures tournaments. These are combined events, meaning men and women play side by side. And so, because tennis players’ grunting and shrieking tend toward the suggestive, and since the courts are behind an opaque row of hedges, several curious tourists have poked their heads into the scene wondering just what exactly the hell is going on here.
That I’m traveling across the Mexican border, with two fifteen year-old girls sporting short skirts and enough sunscreen to enshroud a large moose, is not how I imagined surviving my mid-forties.
On a sunny day in Eastbourne the defending WTA champion joined the seed carnage of the early rounds as she bowed out to USA power-hitter Madison Keys. She books herself an all-American clash with Lauren Davis who put paid to former champion Daniela Hantuchova in some style with a straight sets 6-3 6-3 win.
The Eastbourne organisers must be drowning their sorrows in ice-cream by the sea-side as wildcard fourth seed, former World No. 1 and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka joined Agnieszka Radwanska on an early train back to Wimbledon.
Clay court tennis. Do you like it ? Love it ? Hate it ? Can you slide ? Do you like balls that skid off the line ? Do you like the "DIRT " all over you ? How about when it goes down in your socks ?
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