i'm still pretty high today... last night having cheered baggy (baghdatis :) to victory, though it's hard to say if he deserved it, as he was so obviously outplayed and outfoxed by the lowly ranked german for much of the match.
but marcos did show flashes of brilliance in baseline rallies, was hilariously comical when he was down, and too lovable not to be encouraged ;p
in the end he won by a whisker, taking the first match point in a tightly contested 3rd set tie-break, then celebrated like he just won the title lol
i did not go back today, it's too tiring having spent both day and evening there yesterday... i might not have run more than baggy but i had to climb like 5 storeys to get to the spectator stands at centre court, and it's not funny doing it a few times
*************
arrived at about 3 in the afternoon and saw the same old faces practising... srichaphan, hrbaty etc. a ground pass here is certainly not equivalent to one in sydney, let alone melbourne.
saw the last few games of nathan healey's match on court 1. the guy's a clown, no? too bad he lost the 2nd set in a tie break.
pretty much decided by then that my best bet was to stick with the upcoming ancic v lopez centre court match. (i wasn't much good chasing after players within the 10 seconds window of opportunity, when they left the practice courts.) after landing myself on the 5th floor... nooo i mean the front-most row of the centre court stand, having been denied access to the corporate boxes lol i found a nice quiet corner. when one's that high up, it doesn't make much difference whether one's sitting behind players chairs. but getting some shade was nice.
wang yu v luka gregorc (who? who?) were still playing then. i took a few pics for practice :)
the sun was quite low when mario and feli came out to play. there was a cheer group (very funny) in uniform and holding up mascots (read olympic fever) to cheer on feli, but i didn't see any equivalent for mario (???) maybe the croatian language was too hard to learn. feli didn't seem to have any problem with his shoes, i was starting to doubt that story about him losing his size 47s on the *official* website. i promptly took a few pics of them both, mostly warming up, while there's still good light.
the match was good, it went three sets so fans couldn't complain :) to me mario was more solid in his play, though the legs did seem to feel a bit in the 3rd. his backhands were nice. feli tried net rushing a few times but it just wasn't threatening enough. in the end the better player won... but hey, not before the evening ticket holders came pouring into the stands, while mario was serving for the match. feli and mario were pretty accomodating people considering the disturbance caused lol
when i left the stand, with my bird eye view (i'm just not going to stop whinging about this!) i saw marcos hitting at one of the practice courts. off i went! no photos here, but the only major thing i'd learnt was that his coach... while having a cute face... was really short. ahhh frenchmen :) marcos was nervous i think, he left the grounds after he'd finished, in a serious face, flanked by security and not signing one single autograph. i could understand, it was like only an hour or so before his first match, but ... oh well.
gisela dulko and marion bartoli, beijing 2006 09 20
who's this (1) ?
and this (2) ?
feliciano lopez, beijing 2006 09 12
ivan ljubicic, beijing 2006 09 12
marcos baghdatis, beijing 2006 09 12
mario ancic, beijing 2006 09 09
