Roland Garros 2005 <- France <- Home

Roland Garros

 




Sasha writes:
"We went to the opening days of Roland Garros this week. It was pretty amazing. The first day I had a ticket for the outside courts, which meant that although I couldn't see the biggest names, I could see a lot, a lot, a lot of tennis. I started out with Srichiphan, playing against Stepanek - some fun points, but not enough to keep me there when there was so much to see, so I went to see Nakamura vs Cervano, which was really bad - I don't think either of them are particularly used to clay courts. So, then I went to see Dementieva playing Strycova, and that was a great match - although Strycova lost (and pretty soundly: 6-3, 6-3), she played pretty well, and boy was she demonstrative! I could have learned some great curses in Czech, but she spoke too quickly for me to follow. Then I went to see Sprem playing Camerin (to be honest, I don't really remember that match). I left there and got to see Ferrer playing Vanek - excellent tennis, and some incredible temper tantrums on Ferrer's part. At one point, he was so angry about one of his shots that he banged his racket on the ground a few times, played another point, threw his racket down, then picked it up and broke it over his knee. I didn't know you could do that! The chair umpire had already given him a warning, so he said "racquet abuse" and gave an extra point to Vanek in the tie break they were playing! I thought that would be the end of Ferrer, since generally getting upset does not improve one's tennis, but on the contrary, he came back to win the tie break and finally to win the match. After that was over, I swung by the Frazier/Shaughnessy match, which was incredibly dull, so I decided I had had enough tennis and went home.

We got tickets to one of the three main courts on Wednesday, which was incredible. It happened to be my lucky day, because (although I did not get to see Lindsay) Roger Federer was playing on our court!! But I am getting ahead of myself. First we stopped by one of the outer courts to see David Nalbandian playing against Berdych. Nalbandian basically destroyed Berdych,

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so we left and found our seats in the main court, where we got to see Dementieva in her second round match against Mamic. It was a good match, and I think Mamic will probably do well sometime down the line, but Dementieva was too much for her, and won through after a heavily contested first set with a great tie break.

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We left the main court after that and went to see a little doubles action on one of the side courts, where Srichiphan and his doubles partner Giorgio Galimberti were playing two Americans, Palmer and Oliver. We were right up next to the court, because there are no seats there (it's such a small court), and we were hanging over the fence right next to the ball boys at the net, so we got some great interplay - doubles are actually more fun to watch than i thought, although I still think it's better live. At one point, Galimberti turned a little late to let a ball go past. It went out, but Oliver said that it touched Galimberti's racquet. The chair umpire hadn't seen it, and they got into a bit of an argument, with Galimberti saying, "ask the chair" and refusing to say whether or not it had touched. Finally, Oliver said, "Jojo, are you going to take that?" and "Jojo" replied, "Yeah, I'm going to take that. If we were at 6-6 in the tie break, maybe I wouldn't, but yeah." Oliver got a nice winner in the next point, and you could hear his "YEAH! THAT'S RIGHT!" for miles, as he hit his partner on the [bottom].
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Then we decided to go back to our stadium, because we could hear a really restless crowd in there. It turned out that was because Sebastien Grosjean was playing Sanguinetti, and winning reasonably quickly, but we got back in time to see quite a bit of it.
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After that, Kim Clijsters came out and utterly destroyed Cervanova (whom you may remember from my account of Monday's tennis experience), even though Clijsters was actually playing incredibly badly. She's still a little shaky from all her injuries and illnesses, I think, and her entire right leg is covered in bandages.

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Then, the moment I was waiting for - Federer! I was incredibly excited. He was playing Almagro, a Spaniard, who was pretty good (particularly on clay) and gave Federer some chances to play really beautiful tennis, even if it didn't last long enough. Sigh. So wonderful.
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After that was over, we left our court and went looking for Navratilova and Sanchez-Vicario, who were playing against two Spanish women. It was an amazing match to watch - sadly, they lost, but they played really well. They lost the first set and came back to win the second, but couldn't keep it up for the third. That said, Navratilova is still playing gorgeous tennis.
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So then we left, and that was the end of my glorious days at the French Open."


Photos copyright © David Barber 2005
Text copyright © Sasha Pfau 2005

Roland Garros 2005 <- France <- Home