My Adventure @ 2006 China Open China Junior I! ;D
Sep.17, 2006 [Day 7]The girls singles match was on Court 1, but the boys' singles final match was scheduled on the Centre Court, 12:00 at noon.
We were facing the problem that we haven't got the tickets to enter the centre court, for it was exactly the finals day of the ATP event, the ticket on that day was too expensive. (The price: RMB1280=USD160, lol. BTW, one strange thing about China Open is that for those fans who want to buy tickets the price is too high, while most ppl who actually went in the stadium were not paying for their tickets. But that's another question.)
But there's still hope. Since Mario Ancic was in the finals of both singles and doubles, the doubles final which was supposed to be played at 3pm in the afternoon had to be moved after the singles, and therefore both were scheduled at night session. That means the ATP tournament was not playing any match in the day session. The committee announced that they would move 'a WTA match' to the centre court instead, but we knew that could only be a WTA qualifying match. You can't ask someone to pay USD160 for a WTA qualifying match. We decided to went to the stadium early and try our luck.
Rincy, Shanshan, Stoney and I arrived at the stadium on 10:30. I brought my luggages with me, and put them at the news center. The volunteers in charge of checking the tickets were still standing at the entrances of the centre court. Strange thing was that they were not aware of the schedule at all. I asked them: "Don't you know that the doubles final is moved to the night session?" "Are you kidding? We haven't got any information yet."
Then they went to the news center to check and found the change of the ATP schedule. (No info about the 'WTA match' which was supposed to be moved on Centre Court though.) One of them said: "Sh*t! No match in the day session. I got up that early and now I am standing here as an idiot." So they started to take some mini breaks.
Therefore before 11am we not only entered the center court, but also went into the VIP BOX and sat down comfortably, lol. In fact we seemed to be the only fans who wanted to enter the center court that early. I thought the volunteers would check the stadium before the ATP match, but that would be before the night session; even if the committee announced the movement of the 'WTA match', that would be no early than 3pm. We were not going to stay there that long. All we wanna do was watching the boys singles match between Evgeny Donskoy and a Chinese boy Bai Yan, who was top seeded. (BTW, Bai is his family name.)
Pless and Udomchoke practiced on centre court in the morning. When we went in, they just finished their session and were about to leave.
Then Evgeny came to warm up! He ran a little before hitting and saw us.
He started to hit with his coach. Later Bai came too, with his partner and coach. The boys practiced for half an hour and left.
We sat there waiting for the match to start. We were hungry, but decided to stay, for it would be awful if we went out and were not able to enter again. Nobody was there, except us.
On 12:00 they came to play the final. We applauded them when they got on court. We were the only spectators of the match. One thing embarassed us all: Bai heard the applause and smiled to us...he must have thought that we were supporting him since he's the local boy here. lol
The match began and Bai was serving first. Evgeny was very determined to win the match and he showed his motivation on the very first point. He hit a good winner on that point and we applauded. Bai was astonished, I would say, not only by the winner from Evgeny, but also by our applause.
Well, although we were on Evgeny's side, our behaviour was not bad. During the match, we were applauding good winners from both Evgeny and Bai, and we never cheer for any UEs. Still, it must be a big disappointment to Bai, for we were not rooting for him as he expected. To the top-seeded boy, the fact might be a little hard to accept. And Bai found that his opponent, one year younger and ranking much lower than himself, was a tough one.
Evgeny broke Bai in the first game. His ground strokes were beautiful. Quickly he jumped to a 4-0 lead.
Actually Bai's game is not that bad. Physically he's quite good for tennis, he is tall, and has power. But IMO he lacks some factors in his game. For example, his serve has good speed and power, but without much spin, and he's not mixing it up, so his opponent can read his serve very well and make good returns. And about his ground stroke, the ball went flat and quick too, but still no much spin. When they play a point he intends to finish the point off strongly in the beginning several hits. If it went to a rally with a routine rhythm, he can still hit well. But if there are some spin and rhythm changes in the rally, he's not feeling comfortable. Evgeny, on the contrary, was playing a style that similar to those pro baseliners. He's only 16, but You can feel a touch of rhythm control in his game, building up a point during rallies.
Bai failed to receive Evgeny's second serve a lot of times. Evgeny's first serve is OK, but his second serve, IMO, needs a lot of improvement. Maybe you can say it's the weak point of his game now. The second serve was hit with a lot of spin, but little power and speed. A good receiver could easily hit a winner off such a serve. But Bai failed again and again.
Anyway, Bai began to play better. After holding serve for the first time in the match, he broke Evgeny once. But Evgeny broke back immediately, and was serving for the set at 5-2.
At that point we could see that Evgeny was tired. Maybe he was too intense, and after all he had been playing quite a lot during the week, 2 matches + practice everyday. After a long rally in which Evgeny ran a lot, we saw him breathing hard. The 8th game of the match was quite tough, with some struggle Evgeny managed to hold, and got the 1st set 6-2. It was noon, the sun was very strong. During the break, both boys were trying to sit in the shadow a little longer.
The second set was much closer. Bai started to hold at ease and give Evgeny some pressure in his service game. 5-4, Evgeny serving. In this game Bai got at least 3 bps (also set points), but all were saved. Evgeny held the game, and then made the essential break to lead 6-5!
In the last game Evgeny didn't give Bai any more chances. The last point of the match was a drop shot winner from Evgeny. The ball bounced twice in Bai's court before Bai ran up to it and it was GSM Evgeny Donskoy!
He dropped his raquet and celebrated.
He was so tired that after shaking hands he had to sit on the bench for a while before got up to pick his raquet back. Anyway it doesn't matter, Evgeny's the champion now!
He changed his shirt before the short ceremony, and had his photos taken, together with his coach.
After the match, we went out and waiting for Evgeny at the entrance. WTA players were practicing, but at that moment all we wanted to do was to congratulate Evgeny.
Just then I saw someone walking out of the stadium...with several bodyguards...Wow, Amelie Mauresmo! I knew that she was practicing at 12:00, since we were watching Evgeny's match, I thought I would not be able to see her. She was on her way to lunch. Several fans went up to her, she smiled, signed autographs and taking pics with the fans.
Then we saw Evgeny's coach standing at the entrance. We went up to him to say congratulations. He smiled to me and said: "The pictures are very good. ALL GUYS LOVE THEM." I was so happy to hear that. During our chat I knew that the other boys went to Xiamen in the morning. Evgeny's coach said he's carrying Evgeny to do some site-seeing in the afternoon and they would leave on Monday.
And here comes the answer of the quiz...The coach asked if we were both from Beijing. I told him I was from Shanghai.
He said: "Oh, Shanghai, I've been there.
I won the tournament there, Shanghai Open, in 1995(I went back and found that actually it was 1996, exactly 10 years ago)."
Wow! Now I know why I always feel like having seen his photo somewhere before. I wasn't at Shanghai Open 1996, but when learning the history of the tournament I must have seen some pictures.
His name is
Andrei Olhovskiy. Check his profile at ATP site and you'll find more.
Then Evgeny came out of the stadium. We went to Evgeny, congratulated him. We were all very happy. Evgeny signed autographs for us. We wished him good luck in the future, and Stoney said to him: "Hope to see you here playing the ATP tournament in several years!" Evgeny smiled and said: "Yeah, maybe!"
We waved goodbye to Evgeny and his coach. Then we had our postponed lunch, and watched some WTA players practicing.
Nicole Vaidisova
Maria Kirilenko
My train was going to leave on 7pm, so we left the tennis center on 5pm. Just when we were stepping out of the site, I saw Marcos arrived in his Mercedes-Benz car. Marcos was chatting with his coach, very happily, gesturing, making faces and laughing. He was in a good mood.
We had dinner and I went on the train. My friends went back to watch the finals. Later I got messages from them, telling me that Marcos beat Mario pretty easily. Well, to me it's not surprising, but I'm very happy for Marcos. It's always great to see a young talented player winning his first title.
...And that's all of my adventure @ 2006 China Open.
You had a very exhausting week!
the flu! 
Wow! Now I know why I always feel like having seen his photo somewhere before. I wasn't at Shanghai Open 1996, but when learning the history of the tournament I must have seen some pictures.