Building Up

[[Mornin', everyone. Rosangel is on the case, big-time! This will be your Watercooler post for today. If you have any questions for Rosia, or anything you may want her to ask any of the players at the BlackRock Masters, I suggest you post them in the comments. Perhaps she will choose a time and place to reply to them. . . Pete]]

The BlackRock Masters Tennis Tournament is due to start just about the time this is being posted. Yesterday, I attended the official tournament press conference at the Royal Albert Hall. More about that in a moment, but, as the above picture shows, the court upon which all the matches will be played was still very much under construction in the early afternoon yesterday.

The court didn't exist at all on Sunday. The Albert Hall is basically a music venue - here in the UK, it is best-known as the site of the BBC's "Proms" concerts, a classical-music series with a history going back to 1895. The series lasts for two full months in the late summer, and is extensively broadcast on radio and TV. The arena in which the tennis court is laid, below those sumptuous red-and-gold tiers, is the same open-floor space occupied by the "Prommers" (short for "promenaders", or attendees who don't have actual seats) during the Proms. The Last Night of the Proms has become tradition: it's a wild, joyous affair that spurs some people to don fancy dress, and there's lots of flag-waving and balloons. The festivities that evening are internationally televised, and always follow the same programme of British music, starting with Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1" (that is, Land of Hope and Glory). The Last Night's journey usually continues via Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and God Save the Queen (among others). Only in the days after the 9/11 attacks can I remember a more sombre order of play.

Work on building the court started at 6 a.m. this morning (Monday). Before the indoor surface can be laid, a wooden platform needs to be put in place, and only then can the court surface be laid out. From what I could see, it comes in long strips, which were stacked on court like fat sausages, wrapped in black plastic, waiting to be unrolled. When I left, there was a strong smell of glue. I spoke to the tournament's defending Champion, Paul Haarhuis, during the press conference, and he said that the players may be able to practise on the court for about an hour this evening. None of the players will have much chance to get used to the court before the tournament starts, but at least they're all in the same position.

As many of you will know already, the BlackRock Masters is the season-ending event of the 12-event BlackRock Tour of Champions for senior players - formerly known as the ATP Tour of Champions. To be eligible to play on the Tour, players must have reached number one in the ATP rankings; been a winner or finalist at a Grand Slam; or been a singles player on a winning Davis Cup team. Players must also have been retired from the ATP tour for at least two years.

There are twelve singles places available, filled by the 7 players who have qualified through the Tour (the top 8, excluding the absent Thomas Muster) and five wild cards. The qualification to receive a wild card is less stringent than to play on the Tour. During the press conference, it was announced that Greg Rusedski, who retired in April after helping Great Britain seal a win over the Netherlands in Davis Cup, has a wild card to replace Goran Ivanisevic, who has been forced out due to a hamstring injury.

Greg didn't play much on the ATP tour early in the year, but I wasn't alone in wondering how well he might fare in current company, and how the fast surface will suit his big lefty serve. Greg is not the only last-minute replacement - Bjorn Borg, who returned to the Tour this year, was also forced to withdraw a few days ago, due to an elbow injury sustained in Frankfurt in November. He will be replaced by Wayne Ferreira. The other three wild cards are Jeremy Bates, Guy Forget, and Pat Cash.

The format calls for best-of-three sets BUT with a "Champion's Tiebreak" replacing the customary third set if the players each win a set. The early play is round-robin, with the 12 players divided into four groups of three. This year the groupings are:

A - Sergi Bruguera, Anders Jarryd and Guy Forget.

B) Henri Leconte, Jeremy Bates and Wayne Ferreira.

C) Cedric Pioline, John McEnroe and Pat Cash.

D) Paul Haarhuis, Michael Stich and Greg Rusedski (he clearly has not landed in an easy quarter).

The three-day Round Robin produces eight quarterfinalists, and a knockout tournament is played from Friday through Sunday to determine the Champion. The four singles players who fail to reach the quarterfinals will join eight of the exhibition doubles players from earlier in the week to compete for the doubles title.

This time last year, my very first main post for TennisWorld was a report on the 2006 BlackRockMasters, which I attended as a paying customer. This time, though, I'm officially representing TW with a press credential. Among other advantages, I will be able to sit on the edge of the court during the matches along with the "real" photographers - sans flash, of course.

And also, without excuses. I've noticed that the equipment that the experienced photographers will be using is similar or identical to what I have (did I ever mention in TW that I'm now the proud owner of a Canon ID Mark III, with truly thrilling high-ISO performance guaranteed to facilitate indoor tennis photography....? OK, enough of the photo-buff stuff). This means that anything that they do better than I will be solely attributable to their superior photographic skills.

Still, how could I fail to be inspired by the prospect of being on hand tomorrow evening in the ideal spot to take pictures of Tim Henman (in his first match since retiring after Davis Cup at Wimbledon in September) in his for-charity match against Stefan Edberg? In a e-mail I received some time back, when this was first announced, our regular poster skip1515 ironically dubbed this the "Battle of the Dodgy Forehands."

I spent a good part of this morning's press conference watching how the experienced reporters operate. Eight of the tournament's twelve players were in attendance. There was no formal seating arrangement - everyone just wandered around, sat down, got up, watched and listened to everyone else's conversations, and then jumped in whenever a potential interviewee became free. Some interviews - for example with Pat Cash - were, I think, being formally videotaped.  The players, of course, are there to meet the press, and expect to be pictured, so there is absolutely no embarrassment in wandering around, camera in hand, and taking photos of any of them, whatever they happen to be doing.

I also met the "voice of the Queen's Club/Artois Tennis podcasts", David Law, who has from time to time posted here in TennisWorld. He is also the Director of Communications for the BlackRock Tour of Champions. Even if I hadn't recognised David from his voice, I would have known him from his fleeting appearances on the BBC during Queen's - he looked just as tall in real life as he does when towering over players on TV. David was kind enough to introduce me to both Paul Haarhuis and to Guy Forget.

I asked Paul Haarhuis about the atmosphere on the Tour, and the level of competitiveness compared to the ATP Tour. There's no doubt that, although there's more cameraderie on the senior tour than on the regular ATP tour, he sees it as a competitive enterprise ("No-one likes to lose to anyone else"). He heard about Rusedski replacing Ivanisevic at the same time as everyone else there and, as Greg is in his group, he was already thinking about playing him.

Haarhuis is gunning for a three-peat here. Although he is a renowned doubles champion, he doesn't compete in that division on the BlackRock Tour. The doubles element of this week's programme is basically a free-form exhibition, with the referee (Alan Mills, formerly the Wimbledon chief official) tweaking the length and format of the doubles matches to accomodate the singles schedule.

Guy Forget told me that the audiences in London give great support to the players, and that he really enjoys playing in London. He has been practicing on a surface similar to the one that the tournament will use. I asked him how easy it is to make the adjustment between surfaces at relatively short notice, and he said that winning really isn't really about those things. He clarified what he meant when I asked him how much the clay surface in Paris had to do with Rafael Nadal's success there.

Forget, who watches a lot of tennis and follows the ATP closely, believes that Nadal's outstanding record in Paris has less to do with the surface than his attitude and eagerness at Roland Garros. And he feels that Federer and the other top players are no less driven by attitude, rather than circumstance. Forget, up on all the news about Rafa's foot injury, thinks it's legitimate to ask whether Nadal will be able to perform at peak form on clay next spring because of this nagging issue.

I can already see that I need to acquire a small voice-recording device so that I won't have to paraphrase entire conversations. But, considering that it was my first time attending this type of event, it went better than I could have hoped (I was pretty nervous beforehand, but in a good way). And tomorrow, still to come, my first big moment photographing from the side of the court. Sitting on the ground, I'm told -  unless I can find myself a beanbag or something. Or is that kind of prop for wimps? Oh, and finally, Tim Henman and Stefan Edberg will be meeting the press before their match.

More from me tomorrow.

-- Rosangel