Tennis Week 2017 - another terrific time! (part two)

Welcome back!  Unfortunately, the extremely hot weather continued to our first day at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (say THAT three times fast!), so Mom and I spent much of the day looking for shade.  I did break away from Mom a couple of times to watch some match play, but we mostly looked for shade and watched practice in the new Grandstand, where you can find shade on the far side of the stadium in the afternoons.

There's a lot of construction in and around the tennis center - there's a temporary Louis Armstrong Stadium while the real one that opens next year is being finished, and they finally tore down the old Grandstand.  But nearly everywhere you look, there was some kind of construction going on.  So everything was a little bit noisier, a little bit dirtier, and little bit more crowded.  We wandered over to the food court, to see what was new this year (Melt Shop!  Yay, tater tots!), then I went to the Lavazza stand to see if they reinstated their iced tea option. Unfortunately, no.  Darn it. 

We then walked over to the new practice court area and found a little bit of shade near Court 6.  While Mom stayed in the shade, I watched the first set of a match between two new-to-me players: Bellotti from Italy and Collarini from Argentina. Collarini got the first break of serve, but Bellotti soon found his groove and ended up winning the first set and then the match. While I was watching the tennis, Mom went to the practice court area to look at the practice schedule: we saw that American Madison Keys would be practicing in the new Grandstand (which had shade), so we wandered over there.

Madison is coached by former pro Lindsay Davenport, so it was fun to watch the two of them interact.  It was so hot, Madison didn't practice super-hard, but she did seem to be having fun.  And gosh, she hits the ball hard.  At one point, she was doing target practice with her serve, which was fun to watch. After she was done practicing, Mom and I went to the food court to get some fries and a beverage, then we went back to the shade in the Grandstand to watch two of the guys practice - Feliciano Lopez of Spain and Marin Cilic (2014 champ) of Croatia.  This was a good practice to watch, with contrasting styles and contrasting temperaments.  Pretty much their full arsenals were on display, with big serves vs serve and volley, huge forehands vs slice backhands.  It was fun.  But gosh, we were hot. 

Since none of the qualifying matches were happening on a court that had any shade, we decided to leave early, since there were three more days of tennis.  We went out and got some ice cream at the little kiosk right outside the tennis center, then sat and watched more practicing on the courts in the park.  These courts were under shady trees, so it was much nicer to sit there.  We even saw a boyfriend from last year, Marius Copil from Romania!  He has done well this year and didn't have to qualify for the Open, he got directly in.  It was nice to watch him practice from so close.  When we got home and relaxed in air-conditioned not-quite-splendor, Mom and I watched The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith.  She is quite wonderful in the movie, which is a little awkward and twee as a film.  I'm sure it was much more interesting as a play.  But it was fun to watch more of the Maggie Smith genius...

Wednesday, thankfully, it was a little cooler, so Mom and I had high hopes to watch actual matches.  I forgot to mention earlier, this year in the qualifying tournament, the USTA was trying out two new things: on-court coaching, as long as the coach was on the opposite side of the court as the chairs, and a shot clock, counting down the 25 seconds between the starts of each point.  They were both interesting new ideas, but some of the players had issues with them.  I'll try to mention them moving forward.

The first thing we did was head back towards Court 6, since it had a shady section and since it was by the practice courts and the practice schedule board. Mom sat in some shade while I went to check out the practice schedule - I was happy to see that Mom's favorite, Rafael Nadal, would be practicing in a few minutes, and my darling Roger would be practicing a little later in the day, both on the Grandstand (where we could find shade).  So off we went to the Grandstand. We found some shady seats and enjoyed an energetic practice between Nadal and Lucas Pouille from France (coincidentally, Pouille is the player who knocked Nadal out of the Open last year. Hm.  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?).

I noticed on my US Open app that one of my favorites, Nicolas Mahut from France, would be playing his first round match soon.  I ditched my mom and left her to watch her favorite, and went back over to Court 6 to watch Mahut.  Actually, first I had to watch the end of another match first, a young American, Raymond Sarmiento, against Benjamin Bonzi from France.  Bonzi wasn't as fun to watch as his name is to say.  Again, I didn't know either of these players, but I was impressed with Sarmiento's cool head and improvisation skills. Thankfully, he won relatively quickly and Mahut came out soon after. Mahut was playing Soo Woo Kwon from Korea.  

I just like Mahut's game.  I've been watching him for quite a while now.  He keeps his ranking up in doubles (he and his partner have won the last two tournaments), but his singles ranking goes up and down.  It's too bad he keeps having to qualify, but at least it means I get to watch him.  For free.  And a special bonus, I was sitting behind Mahut's wife and son!  His son is adorable!  He kept yelling "allez, papa!" in the cutest voice.  So that made the match even more fun.  Mahut was in control the whole match, though it did take him a while to get into the whole 'shot clock' thing.  He kept asking the chair umpire if the clock started at the end of the previous point, if it started when he got the towel.  He seemed a little rattled by it, but he never went over the 25 seconds.  Oh, and Mahut also had quite an argument with the chair umpire at the end of the first set: Mahut thought he served an ace to end the set, but as he was doing his fist pump and walking back to his chair, the chair umpire called "LET."  Mahut wasn't having it.  I was afraid he would be so out of his concentration that he would lose the game, but he didn't, thankfully.  He won the match pretty easily and his son was so excited.  Adorable.

After the Mahut match, Mom and I went to eat a quick lunch, so we could get back to the shade in the Grandstand and watch my uber-favorite, Roger Federer practice.  Squee!  It's been a long time since I could watch Roger practice for an extended length of time. He was on court with a young American, Mackenzie McDonald, who has a very pleasant way about him. Roger didn't look like he was playing full out, his serve looked abbreviated, and he didn't run for every ball, but he did look relatively fit.  Perhaps he was easing himself back into fighting mode.  I enjoyed watching him for the full 90 minute practice, then we were treated to more pros, when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet (both from France) came in to practice.  They both have terrific joie de vivre, plus they're friends, so their practices are always enjoyable.  After watching them for about an hour, Mom and I decided to call it a day, since the other matches we were interested in checking out had no shade (my mom was not having the sunny court matches). We left and went to Panera Bread for dinner (for some reason, I was jonesing for a turkey sandwich).  It was another nice day.

You know what?  This post has been long enough.  I'll put the last two days of Tennis Week in another post.  Besides, my brain is tired.  :)