When I got to the tennis centre this morning, I again wandered around to see what was happening, and the first court I went to had David Nalbandian practising, so I watched that for a bit. I also saw bits of Paul-Henri Mathieu's match against Paul Capdeville, though there was no chance of getting a seat because of the hordes of Chilean fans. Speaking of Chile, I also saw Fernando Gonzalez practising with Nicolas Massu, and also the training sessions of Novak Djokovic, Lleyton Hewitt, Chris Guccione and Peter Luczak. Other matches I saw included Marc Gicquel v Stanislas Wawrinka, and Guillermo Garcia Lopez v Alejandro Falla. Today also marked the start of the doubles event, so we made a point of going to watch some of those matches. Firstly Montanes/Hernandez v Lipsky/Martin, where we happened to sit next to Scott Lipsky's girlfriend (although we were going for the Spaniards) and she was really nice, and we then headed to the neighbouring court to see Garcia Lopez/Verdasco v Matkowski/Fyrstenberg. I had never seen the Poles play live before, and they were pretty intense. They got quite angry when they were on the back foot, but eventually prevailed over the Spaniards in 3 sets.
Thursday 17 January 2008:
Our last day at the tournament, and my first priority was to see Juan Carlos Ferrero's match against Alun Jones. This time, it was put on Margaret Court Arena, also due to the fact that he was playing an Aussie, but it was still packed and very hard to get a seat. There were quite a few Aussie fans, as well as Spanish fans, and it had a nice atmosphere. I was cheering for Ferrero and was happy to see him go through in straights. He is a nice guy and I hope he does well this year. After that it was over to neighbouring Show Court 2 to see Fernando Verdasco against Janko Tipsarevic. We came in halfway through the match, but my friend had saved some seats about 2 rows from the front, so we had a great view. The first two sets had been very close, but Tipsarevic had won them, and looked to have the upper hand in the third set too. Verdasco was getting very frustrated and this eventually took its toll on him, with Tipsarevic winning in 3. This was the match before his big clash with Roger Federer, which I only saw on tv, but which would have been the upset of the decade if he had pulled it off! In any case, he played brilliantly. After that match, the only other match I wanted to see was David Ferrer v Juan Martin Del Potro. It amuses me how David gets so worked up in matches and wanders around in circles before he's about to receive. I hadn't noticed it before, but it was quite funny to observe. He played very well, and in fact only ended up having to play 2 sets, because Del Potro retired with what appeared to be a back injury. A shame for the young Argentine, but he is definitely a rising star and will be hitting the big time soon I expect. After the match, we happened to bump into Javier Piles (David's coach) and Albert Montanes, who had come to cheer David on, and I congratulated Javier on all of David's recent successes, as I had not seen him in a long time. David and Javier are also both really nice guys, and it's amazing to think he is now top 5 in the world, because when I lived in Spain in 2004, he used to shop at the same grocery store as me in Valencia, and I used to bump into him there and say hi and nobody else would recognise him! How time flies.. So that was pretty much it. We wandered around a bit in case there was anything else to see, but for me, I had seen what I wanted to see and was ready to go home, especially as the atmosphere was now also starting to die off. From now on, a lot of the main matches would be on Vodafone Arena and Rod Laver Arena, so I was quite happy to watch them on my tv screen at home. All in all it had been a nice time, with great weather, and I look forward to returning again next year. I will make a blog about the second week of the event to analyse some of the big matches, so make sure you read that too!