sydney 2007, qualifying saturday

"so you like the frenchmen?" - paulo

hey, tennis is back here at home! i decided to spend just a short morning at the tennis today to avoid the heat. a little star-gazing and practice with the camera and conditions, would be good enough for me...

so i saw a bit of my old favourite (whom the camera loves), feli lopez, losing to kevin kim in the first round of qualies, and behaving rather badly too at times.

more happily, i saw a few of the french gang supporting their countrymen, nicolas devilder and olivier patience, who played their matches on adjacent courts. first there was paulo (mathieu) and his coach(?), then sebastien grosjean, then emilie loit (i think?) came to join the party. surely they couldn't be practising all day, and good team spirit was essential! good to see seb back in sydney. i don't remember having met paulo before here though.

sadly both devilder and patience lost their matches. time for the guys to get back indoors to wait for the main draw...

many other lesser known guys battled on in the heat, but it's time for me to call it a day as well.

as usual, more pics will be available in a new gallery at vtp some time later... ;)

EXTRA: here's a pic of nicolas devilder, especially for you-know-who-you-are ;)