The Western Southern Open tennis matches started Saturday and, thanks to a generous friend of Sweeties (thanks, George!), we got free tickets to Center Court for Monday!!!
When you have tickets to Center Court (box tickets, anyway), you can go into any other court at any other time and see other matches. So we wandered and saw our first match in Center Court between Verdasco and Bellucci (Verdasco won and made the ladies' hearts flutter :)
There was even a girl with a sign in hot pink that said: Ud. es caliente Verdaso - and, of course, she got on camera and he hit a ball to her after he won the match :)
These players are so amazing - you don't realize how fast that ball goes and how hard they hit it until you are on the court watching.
We had seats down front just 4 rows back from front row, and the weather was perfect - overcast with a slight breeze to cool us off.
After watching this match, we wandered over to the practice courts to see who was practicing (those who won't play until tomorrow).
Like this guy - Roger Federer!! The court was packed with people standing on the bleachers (no one was sitting down), watching and hoping for a photo and an autograph after the match. He stayed and signed a lot of things - very nice guy.
We also saw Juan Martin Del Portro practice for a little while and then went to see another match in Center Court between Alexandre Dolgopolov and Richard Gasquet.
Gasquet won but Alex is someone to be watched - if he can control his raw power he'll be a name to watch for in a year or two.
I never saw anyone hit the ball harder than he did with serve and return. Whew!
Had a great day - was there from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm and loved it all.
And I met a woman from Tennessee who is a collage/altered book artist and we shared blogsites and talk about art - what fun (hi, Eva!!).
5 comments:
Hi Rhonda,
WOW! The tennis is SO exciting! Especially the part about meeting a fellow artist/blogger! LOL
Smashing photos!
Jane, it was fun to meet a fellow blogger and artist sitting right next to you with her bag full of art books and stuff and talk about my bag (the ravens by Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson from Flashbags) and talk tennis, too. Pretty cool seeing Roger THE MAN up close and personal, too.
Autumn, good pun! ha ha Sweetie took tons more but didn't want to bore the non-tennis fans in the blogosphere :)
Hi Rhonda,
Your husband did a great job with the photos. That was the best ever tournament.
LOVE the character of yourself. I use a character too. A friend at the Berry Company (making ads for the Yellow Pages) created it.
I took a picture of that Verdasco sign you mentioned (will have to post that along with your photo on the next blog). Now, I see why people think blogging is so fun. Keep working on all your wonderful art!
Hey, Naieva! It was so much fun to meet you and talk art and tennis :) Hope you see you visit here again and I'll check your blog to see when you post those pics. Jerry took SO MANY photos, I just picked a few to share - he has one of Roger that is even better than this one and we enjoyed watching the matches on t.v. up to the finals. Some crazy turnarounds this year. My little avatar is actually a photo of my Mii from our Wii game! ha ha
Post a Comment