!Ahoy
[Pete Bodo is on vacation, Thurs Feb 14th to Monday Feb. 25th. Meanwhile, enjoy the guest posts!]
By Rosangel Valenti, TennisWorld Contributing Editor
Morning. This will be today's thread for match-calling and discussing the tennis being played, as well as other tennis-related chat.
I finally made it to Rotterdam for some live tennis yesterday, though not without a difficult moment or two. If you have paid any attention to the stories of my tennis-related adventures in Europe, you will probably have worked out that this is normal for me - I attract travel problems. Yesterday's related to unexpected cold thick fog, which reduced my motorway journey to a nightmarish bumper-to-bumper crawl in the early-morning darkness, and made me miss the turnoff to Terminal Four. Luckily I carry no check-in baggage, which always helps in speeding progress through a busy airport so as not to miss the only available timely direct flight. The near-freezing fog may have been anticipated by others who, unlike me, checked the weather forecast the night before, but but I was far too busy packing camera and laptop equipment to think of it. In the digital age, if you leave behind a crucial cable or battery, your lovingly-carried equipment can end up being rendered useless. In my workroom at home, I have counted no fewer than 26 necessary plug sockets being used via extension cables, and that doesn't even take account of the cables to connect computer to other equipment. Here in Rotterdam, I have at least ten cables to hand.
I plan to write more about the tournament after returning home. However, I was present for all of yesterday's Centre Court matches, so witnessed the continuing first-round bonfire of many of the tournament's big attractions. Naturally, the local boy Robin Haase had most of the crowd support when he played Andy Murray (who complemented his St Andrew's flag wristbands with a matching cap yesterday). With the crowd to inspire him, Haase demonstrated considerable depth on his groundstrokes, and in many cases was able to use them to create winners with sheer pace and accuracy - both of which which Murray seemed unable to match with any consistency. Murray also had few real chances to break the Haase serve, which proved reliable throughout. Haase was delighted with his win, as he demonstrated with a spectacular leap of pure pleasure when he thanked the crowd after shaking hands at the end.
I kept expecting Lleyton Hewitt to somehow edge through his encounter with Andreas Seppi, especially when he served for it at 6-5 in the third set. This was another encounter filled with power baseline rallies, and involved numerous service breaks. I've rarely seen Seppi play (and previously it has always been on clay) - yesterday he played Hewitt at Hewitt's own game, but proved a little better at some crucial moments, and mostly managed to keep Hewitt pinned at the back of the court. Hewitt seemed lacking in passion - I saw a few clenched fists from him, but little of the old emotion otherwise.
With so many expectations already having been upset (although Berdych efficiently took out Ljubic in front of a skeleton crowd towards the end of the afternoon), by the time the Nadal-Tursunov encounter took place (the first evening session), I was geared towards expecting the worst. I think this may be a state of mind common to many fans of various players - be prepared for the worst, and be pleasantly relieved when the worst doesn't happen. It started out being a match dominated by the serve (of both players). Tursunov is no Tsonga (no drop volleys to worry about), so of course, once Nadal had got a read on the Tursunov serve, he was able to assert himself from the baseline (not spending too much time mired well behind it, either), while convincingly holding his own serve and committing few unforced errors. At some stage during the second set (after going down a break), Tursunov seemed to visibly lose belief that he could come back and win - it's not that he was playing badly, either. This court looks to be fairly high-bouncing, and seemed to suit the usual Nadal modus operandi. The stadium was completely full with an 8000-strong audience for this match, and I suspect that afterwards, somewhere Richard Krajicek was counting his blessings that at least one of his big-name crowd-pleasers had survived the cull for at least one more day.
The crowd drained out rapidly after this session was over. I stayed until the end of the final match, between Janko Tipsarevic and Gilles Simon. Tipsarevic showed a great deal of belief and emotion on court (coupled with positive, aggressive play, which didn't always work in his favour, and some racquet-bashing), and I think had the larger part of the remaining crowd with him. Despite it being past midnight when the match ended, Tipsarevic had faced down enough match points to have people urging him to turn the match around. The handshake between the two men at the end of this match was warmer than after any of those earlier in the day. And I think Janko Tipsarevic is my new favourite underdog, after fighting every single point until the very end.
I have, of course, plenty of pictures taken during the day - but will need to wait until I get home before uploading the usual web galleries.
As always, enjoy the day's tennis - while I make my way to the wonderfully-named Ahoy Stadium for some more live matches today.