Friday, Mom and I spent the whole day at the qualies. It was a beautiful day, weather-wise, the calm before the storm, I guess. Hurricane Irene was on its way, just a couple of days away. But we had ourselves some fun on Friday.
There were ladies practicing in the Grandstand and Louis Armstrong, so we opted to watch a gent's match first. Mom decided she wanted to watch Michael Yani play his second round match--she liked him when we watched him Wednesday. Because it rained nearly all day Thursday, poor Michael (and most of the other players) had to play two matches on Friday, just to get into the Open. We watched both of Michael's matches.
Like Wednesday, Michael played a smooth, smart match and didn't get any resistance from his opponent, Pablo Galdon from Argentina. Probably luckily for him, it was a pretty quick straight-set win, since he would have to play his third-round a few hours later. He conserved his energy, played tough when he needed to get the break, then served out each set. I sadly admit that I remember next to nothing about Galdon's game. If he had a weapon, I don't remember it. I guess I should've paid better attention. :)
Next, we stopped by our favorite, Court 11, to watch Laura Robson from Great Britain. She had split the first two sets with a very young American, Taylor Townsend. I've watched Robson quite a few times on tv--she gets a lot of airtime during Wimbledon (she won the girls title there at 14), and seems a nice girl. She played Maria Sharapova extremely tough this year at Wimbledon, so I was glad to see her live.
Robson has a deceptive lefty serve and a wicked forehand. She was playing pretty recklessly at the beginning of the set and was quickly down a break to Townsend, who was really going for broke. She was smacking winners all over the place, but when it came time for her to serve out the match, that's when Townsend's youth and inexperience came to play.
I think there's quite a bit of upside to Townsend's game, but in the end, she couldn't handle her nerves and serve out the match. Robson finally won in a third set tiebreak. She won her third round match later the same day to qualify for the Open. That speaks well for her fitness and mental focus, I think. She's rather slight, though, so many if she gets a bit more muscle on her, she will be more formidable.
Next, we had to get some lunch. Hungry hungry. Mom and I are big fans of the waffle fries at the Open, so we got ourselves some fries and split a sandwich from the Carnegie Deli booth. $13.75 for a sandwich (without fries) is a bit much, though the sandwich did have a lot of turkey on it (ok, sue me, no veganism again) and the bread was very fresh. I just think some chips or fries should come with it at that price. OH, and the pickle was delicious. :)
I really wanted to see Roger practice, and they had it down on a schedule that he would be practicing on practice court 1, but the hoards of people dissuaded me. I can't really stand to be in crowds anymore (too much jostling) and I figured my annoyance would outweigh my enjoyment, so Mom and I went to watch a recent Roger opponent, Vasek Pospisil from Canada. Roger played Pospisil in Montreal and thought the kid acquitted himself well. I read the kid's post-match interview and thought he sounded cute, so we went to check him out. Cute, he was not. He was a crankypants. He argued every call and didn't show a lot of respect towards his opponent, Charles Brezac from France. So--not a good first impression and I may not follow his career very closely. You know me. I hold a grudge. :)
Next, we went to watch a NICE Canadian (see what I did there? I held a grudge), Frank Dancevic, take on a young American, Bradley Klahn. They had split the first two sets, so we settled into good ole Court 11 to watch the third set. Clearly, Dancevic has more advanced skills than Klahn, who has a perfectly nice game, but nothing very threatening. Dancevic has a fairly big serve and he'll occasionally serve and volley, which is always fun to see. So he took the third set pretty easily and seemed to appreciate the crowd's fair-minded support of both players. Sometimes, the American matches can seem like Davis Cup matches, with lots of yelling, but this crowd was very respectful. Good on 'ya, court 11 peeps.
Mom and I were extremely hot by this point (I'm still pretty sensitive to heat and over-perspiring), so we stopped and got a frozen lemonade and then went to the grandstand to see who was practicing. The grandstand is very shady in the afternoon, so there were a lot of people there, cooling down. Unfortunately, there was no practicing going on. There was, however, Hawk-Eye testing going on. There were guys setting balls up around the court, testing the technology, then they put the balls down in a very interesting manner:
I wonder if you have to have a special skill or take a test to do this job--make sure you can put the balls in equal distances apart, or be able to hit a line nine times out of ten. Anyway, whatever they have to do, it was sort of interesting to watch. And we were in the shade, so that was a good thing.
After watching this for about 45 minutes, finally some players came in to practice. We got to watch Viktor Troicki, Serbia, practice with (I think) Florian Mayer, Germany. They were NOT fooling around. They were practicing full-out and hitting the ball really hard. I don't know how good an idea that was, considering the pounding sun, but they seemed to get a lot out of it. They didn't interact much with each other, so I don't think this was a 'friend practice with friend' sort of thing. Though I could, of course, be wrong.
We wandered into Armstrong and watched Robin Soderling, Sweden, practice with Jurgen Melzer, Austria, for a bit, but the sun was just too much for me. So we didn't stay there long. We decided to find Michael Yani's third round match. And, by coincidence, he was playing Rajiv Ram, who we enjoyed watching on Wednesday night.
Michael took awhile to warm up and pretty quickly lost the first set. I was worried that he was tired after playing his second round match just a few hours ago, but he started to find his groove in the second set. Rajiv Ram was again the more aggressive player, and again found it hard to place his first serves.
If he had been able to get those first serves in, he might've won. He probably should've won--he served for it in the third set. But Yani held his nerve better and won. He had quite a lot of fans again in the stands and there was lots of lusty respectful cheering throughout. I was actually surprised that Ram didn't have more followers--the Indian community is quite large in Flushing and he had quite a bit of support in the match we watched on Wednesday night. Ram did make it into the Open's main draw in doubles, so at least it wasn't all bad news for him.
Interestingly, Yani drew a player that I watched in last year's qualies as his opponent in the first round of the Open: Bernard Tomic. I knew that Tomic had a bigger game, so I wasn't surprised that poor Michael went out in straight sets. But at least he got to play one match in the main draw, even if it didn't end the way he most likely wanted it to.
I'll finish with more serving photos. Mom and I had tickets to see Saturday's Arthur Ashe Kids Day, but they cancelled it, because of Hurricane Irene. Probably best, though I was disappointed to miss it. We had fifth row seats! I've never sat that close in Ashe Stadium! When I post pictures from my annual Open visits, you'll see where my view is usually from... ;)
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