meobnal

Tuesday is my day off work, so a chance to take in some MD action as well. I got to the venue about 30 min before the first match, so I had time to check out a little bit of practice between Simon and the newly arrived Paire.

Simon

Simon & Paire

It was a bit busier than the Qualies weekend, but still pretty relaxed at this time in the morning. And as I had brought my French flag with me anyway, so I got Simon and Paire to sign it :p [1]

Some unknown reasons, Tursunov was also still about.

Then it was on to the dreadful Center Court for the most important thing of the day: M&M v Bopanna/Ram!

Marc checking himself out on the big screen

In the first set M&M were definitely the stronger pair, holding more easily & having multiple break chances. To give credit to Bopanna/Ram, most of those were saved with winners (tho some were also squandered by overzealous returns). In the end the TB reflected the set and was comfortably won by M&M.

In the second set Marcel was noticeably more shaky, going down 0-40 twice on his serve. They were fortunate Bopanna/Ram's level had also dropped that they didn't get broken. M&M finally got their own break chance and were lucky again; Ram stopped play on the Deciding Point to challenge and got the challenge wrong, giving M&M the decisive break. By this point it looked like Bopanna/Ram's spirit had been broken by all their missed chances and Marcel could serve out the match.

On the pics you can only see the rather empty corporate boxes, but the stands themselves were nicely filled up, considering this was Monday morning doubles

Token Bopanna/Ram pic

Time to get off CC! I moved to court 1 were Polish Power wrapped up a pretty even first set in a TB over French novelty pairing Paire/Simon.

Paire/Simon

Polish Power

The Poles went downhill fast in the second set, esp Fyrstenberg was all over the place and was lucky to get broken only once. I was joined by

triplebagel again & her dad, which seemed to cheer up the Poles, cos they got themselves together again to close it out in the MTB :)

We stayed on court 1, expecting to see Llodra v Benneteau. Turned out Llodra had withdrawn, so we ended up with Benneteau v Kamke instead. Meaning I could display my French flag without confusion ;)

Benny

Kamke

This was pretty straightforward one-way traffic.

Back to CC for Gulbis v Haase. This was priceless :) We got there at the end of the first set, which Gulbis won comfortably. The second set was a complete annihilation of Haase. Gulbis was hitting second serve aces and return winners for the hell of it. It was amazing fun to watch.
Small note: Marc and Marcel (later joined by Vicente) turned up to watch this.

Gulbis

Haase

At this point in the day there was some confusion, cos Federer was scheduled to do a training on court 1. But court 1 (running late) also had a doubles match I wanted to see scheduled on it at the same time. Luckily for me, Triple and her dad had already gone over to court 1 to check out what was happening and could let me know that indeed Qureshi/Rojer v Benneteau/Gasquet was going ahead so I could head over there in time.

It was pretty busy when I got there (thanks to Triple for saving me a seat!) cos it was full of people still waiting there for Fed even though the doubles were already warming up on court. At some point, word got out that Fed had been moved to (the tiny) court 2 and there was a ridiculously rush of people leaving. Mohamed Lahyani was in the chair and had to extend the warm-up cos it was such chaos there was no way they could start play :p

Qureshi/Rojer

Benneteau/Gasquet

Gasquet was top notch and the Frenchies ran over Qureshi and Rojer quite easily (again small note: Marcel and Vicente turned up to watch this too (no Marc this time))

Mo was a joy as umpire :) At one point a lady in front of us had caught a ball that had gone out. Mo signalled that she could keep it, but she misunderstood and threw it back to the ball boy at the end of the game. Then she realised it was 'news balls' change. She tried to get the ball boy to give the old ball back to her, but he didn't understand, so Mo got the ball back and saved it for her :)
Mo got asked for more photos and autographs after the game than the players :p

This was the end of the day session, so that was it for me for this year. Again next year :)

[1] For those interested in this kind of info, I should mention that after practice Simon decided to change his shorts *on court*. He was wearing tight black boxer-shorts thingies underneath (no expert on Men's underwear), kinda like this. Just in case someone needs to know this for 'reference' ;)