Memphis 2007, or The Swedish Love Fest!!

[Lee]

X-man

[Stefan Koubek Fashion Guru]

Koubek is alright off the court, just a bit crazy on it and that isn't always a bad thing.

As for WTA matches that is for eating, taking a piss and checking out who is training and the women.

[TennisHack]

Woohoo, it was a fabulous day today! And I hope to have a special surprise for you JMDP fans ;D

Lots of pics today. Also, we rode in the elevator with players (women) and they are staying above and below us, so I guess I was wrong about them getting special treatment. Maybe just the superstars...

[TennisHack]

admin said:

First things first - of the 94 pics taken, only 63 make the cut. Maybe someone (GWH?) can identify this guy, who I think is in Ginepri camp:

This guy is Alan Taylor, and is either a coach or a player guest. We couldn't tell.

[TennisHack]

Day 4: Tues 2/20

After a slow few days in the star-gazing dept, we had a 'flood' this morning. Spotted at breakfast were Youlia Fedossova, Milagros Sequera and Frank Dancevic (together), and on the way out the door -- Alina Jidkova and coach/boyfriend, and Kristian Pless. On the way back tonight, we shared an elevator with Jill Craybas and Bryanne Stewart

The first match we went to see this morning was (1R) Shahar Peer vs Emma Laine. I have to support the Finns, yanno Since you guys aren't big fans I'll spare you the details, but I will say that I was impressed with Laine, having never seen her play before. She's very crafty. She moonballed Peer a bit, drawing groans from the crowd, but her moonies and slices frustrated Peer, who was already having a tough time on serve, and she earned quite a few errors with her play. The only problem is, Laine's serve is horrible. She serves under 90 mph regularly (Peer was no big server today, either) and hits a lot of serves into the net. It really killed her chances when she couldn't hold serve to consolidate a break. Peer's serve came back at the end of the match, but barely. She is nowhere near top form (or so I hope!).

Some Laine pics, for the curious:

Peer:

While waiting for the feature match, we sat through the blitzy first set of (1R) Amer Delic vs Paul Goldstein. It took the women over an hour to play 10 games, whereas here, it was a quick serving contest that made time pass quite quickly.

Delic is a total hottie! I guess because I've only ever seen him on TV playing outdoors, I never noticed. He's also very tall. Most of the journeymen Americans are shorter guys, like Goldstein, who have to work very hard for their points. But Delic not only impressed with his looks, but with his backhand. Yummy, a one-hander who knows how to use it! He followed it into net effectively, too. Hmmm, I think I have a new favorite American, LOL!

Goldstein was very solid, but couldn't quite handle Delic's power. He served pretty big himself, and it didn't seem like he was serving or playing beyond his abilities, like it did with Phillip King earlier in the week.

My pic quality is pretty poor today, and of all the pics I took of Delic, only one came out clearly:

I'm not the only one who hates the lighting here; I was stargazing in the main hallway and overheard a professional photog talking about the yellow light on the two smaller courts. So I feel vindicated! ;D Of course, their professional equipment gives them nice shots no matter what...

We left after the first set and made our way to Grandstand for JMDP. Stosur was finishing her match vs the tall, chunky Canadian Alexandria Wozniack. Finally, we ran into a woman who knew how to serve, and how to use it as a weapon instead of merely a way to start a rally! It took 4 days, but we finally found one, hooray!

[TennisHack]

So, the ladies clear the court and its time for (1R) Feliciano Lopez vs Juan Martin Del Potro. I had to prepare myself for an onslaught of hottness, with F. "I'm too sexy for my backhand" Lo and the super-cute chair umpire from the Malisse match sharing the same court

Now, I'd heard a lot about this kid, but I'd never seen him before. I was surprised by how tall he was. He makes F.Lo look short.

JMDP was impressive right from the start. He has a big serve, and it was clicking on all gears today. He held easily, as he would in ALL of his serve games today. He also impressed with his wheels. He looked like he could run all day and never get tired. Very nice for such a tall guy.

He broke Lopez with a beautiful forehand at full bore to gain 3-1.

He holds easily for 4-1, and plays some awesome rallies to earn a second break and serve for the first set after only 17 minutes! F.Lo looks frustrated, and well he should be -- JMDP had clearly read the playbook on how to beat F.Lo, which was to pick on that backhand exclusively. He did that, and mixed up his shots very well to draw the errors. F.Lo was talking to himself and complaining about line calls from very early in the match. JMDP, on the other hand, was a very cool customer, a mere fist pump and rare grunt were his only forms of emotion. That went over very well with me.

JMDP takes the first set in 20 minutes flat, hitting only one DF and never being threatened on serve. Man oh man, but I was excited! He impressed me a ton, but luckily it didn't stop there. What I especially liked was how easily he moved around the court. For such a tall guy, it sure looked effortless.

F.Lo's response to losing the first set 1-6 is to serve big and serve hard. He holds for the first time since his first serve game of the match, but that doesn't stop him from bitching at the chair about something.

JMDP goes one better. He held and then broke for 2-1. F.Lo went to the net for 3 points of his serve game and got burned each time. He could only stare disbelievingly as the ball whipped past him. On break point, he went from defense to offense and broke down F.Lo's weak backhand slice to draw the error!

He broke again for 4-1 before F.Lo finally held, though he certainly appeared to have given up a few games before that. JMDP won 61 62 in 50 minutes, and my jaw was literally scraping the floor.

"Striking" is not the word to describe this guy! He made F.Lo look like a complete and total hack, exposing his nonexistent backhand and how much his game breaks down when his serve is less than perfect. But F.Lo couldn't stop some of the shots JMDP hit - simply amazing. Say what you will about F.Lo, but he does play well on fast surfaces. JMDP plays like he went to claycourter school, so to completely humiliate someone like F.Lo was a very impressive debut.

I don't always fall for the Next Big Thing - I hated Nadal more or less the first time I saw him - but this guy is something special. I'll have to see him again, vs someone with both a forehand and a backhand, before I completely jump on the bandwagon, but I am officially impressed (have I used that word enough in this post, LOL? )

The "surprise" I have for you fans is that I figured out another feature on my camera (I've only had the thing 5 years, and in the last two days learned more about it than over that whole time), and that is -- how to shoot movie clips! They are only 14 sec long, and I wasn't able to get a full JMDP point on any of them, but I shot 7 clips. I attempted to upload them to both photobucket and google, but the quality suffered a great deal. So if anybody has any ideas on how to share them here, let me know. Otherwise I will gladly email interested parties. The clips are about 3 MB each, if that matters.

As a footnote, this official-coach-looking guy was in the stands the whole time, and I thought, why not play another round of "guess who?"

[TennisHack]

The JMDP match ended in time for me to catch Thomas Johansson's doubles match. He's playing with Julien Benneteau, and I assume this guy is his coach

because he kept applauding after Benneteau did something right

(1R) Benneteau/Johansson vs Ginepri/Kendrick was about as much of a blowout as it looked. B/J were up 4-1 before a small comeback by the Americans got things to 5-4. Kendrick wasn't that bad, but Ginepri was more or less useless. Interestingly, B/J broke the stronger serve of Kendrick more often, thanks to that silly no-ad scoring. There was a no-ad match point, where Ginepri netted an easy volley, and it was kinda surprising that it was over that fast.

But you can imagine -- I was doing a bit of that teenybopper thing on the inside thanks to JMDP, and I get to go in and see the completely adorable ToJo for the next hour. I was a very happy girl!

Interestingly, the doubles match also clocked in under an hour -- the second of three that I'd witness today.

My sorry 'preview' pics of ToJo:

We could still form the massive thighs club, ToJo and me, but that doesn't make him any less adorable

After the doubles, we went into the vendor area to check out who all moved in. The food is way expensive at the tourney, so we've been leaving and eating elsewhere within walking distance. There wasn't a whole lot to see, so I sat down in the main hallway between the courts and the players' area. The players' lounge is upstairs, and the practice courts are behind the vendor area, and at the end of this hallway are the stairs to the lounge and the door that the players were shuttled through for practice. It was the perfect place to stargaze, as the players were coming and going from matches and practice and whatever. I saw Julien Benneteau shortly after sitting down, but no ToJo I also saw Alina Jidkova shortly after her match, she was gasping and trying not to cry as she limped down the hall on her leg that had been so tightly wrapped during qualifying. Apparently she sprained her ankle.

It's interesting to stargaze because suddenly everyone with a badge becomes 'important'. It's fun to people-watch in general, and it's fun trying to guess who's a coach or a player guest if you can only catch a glance at their pass. A lot of them have taken to wearing them face-in so they just look important I need to figure out how to get in good with a player so I, too, can act all important and wear warmups and have someone cart me around

[TennisHack]

As you guys already can tell, I pay equal attention to the chair umpires and the crowd as I do the match on court. If anybody has been following us around this week, they've witnessed some strange behavior. We had talked about how crazy the crowd was for the first Venus match, and how the chair umpire didn't really try to control them. For the Delic-Goldstein match, guess who was in the chair?

Norm Chryst! Finally, someone who will control that hot mess of ballkids

I poked my mom in the side and squealed "Normie!" We grabbed our cameras and immediately started taking pictures of him. We're right next to the media booth, and the announcer guy probably thought we were completely nuts.

The super-cute chair umpire was back for (1R) Tommy Haas vs Vincent "Ain't Afraida Ya" Spadea, the first night match.

There wasn't much to this match. Spadea, in his pimped-out clothes, was no real match for Haas, who was serving and moving very well. He broke Spadea almost at will and never faced any true threats himself. There were a lot of close line calls, but Cute Chair Umpire held his own. He also controlled the crowd better than his counterpart last night.

Spadea gave up about halfway through the second set, going through the motions just convincingly enough. He was upset because he thought a lot of calls went against him, and in the last game, only half-heartedly attempted to serve. Match point was won after a weak first shot into the net. This match also clocked in under the 1 hour mark. I was shocked, but at least we got to leave after that. No way was I sitting through another Venus match.

Haas was interviewed by some local sports channel that we don't get here in the hotel, the same as Venus last night.

In that same hallway between the players' area and the courts they have a hall of champions with portrait pictures of all the past winners of the tourney, and Brad Gilbert's is absolutely hilarious. It's an action shot, and he has a huge afro and ugly 80s sunglasses. I couldn't resist having my picture taken with it, and while this was happening, some random players coach looked over my mom's shoulder and said, "That's a good picture!" I was smiling sarcastically and giving BG a big on his fashion sense, but we think this guy thought I was some kind of big fan of his...

So much for close encounters, LOL.

[choupi]

Hackie Didn't I tell you JMDP was a guy to watch? Yes, he is definitely impressive. And it's true that his ability to move that way on the court, so quickly, surprises given how tall he is. Yes, I look like a microb next to him!! ;D Glad that you could finally discover about him. Welcome onto his bandwagon!!!

Thanks for the reports, the pics. I have no idea about the videos though. I thought photobucket would be the best option. Sorry.

[choupi]

Btw, I think this guy, watching the ToJo match, who turns his head, is Nicolas Lindstedt. But I'm not too sure.