Thursday August 23, 2007 - Wei decided to go with me today. Again it was overcast as we headed out to Flushing. The Open is still playing catch-up with their schedule, starting early and running late. Several matches overlapped and we saw only a couple of matches from start to finish; mostly we moved from court to court, seeing a few games or a set here & there as we tried to get a glimpse of various players in action.
One match we watched in its entirety was Columbian lefty Alejandro Falla versus the very young American Matt Bruch. Matt has lots of talent but needs to build stamina; Alejandro didn't beat up on him too badly. Victor Troicki mauled Bruno Echagaray of Mexico in the first set but Bruno got things together and took the next two sets. Top-seeded Frank Dancevic won but it was hardly a stroll thru the park for the tall Canadian with Peruvian Ivan Miranda's feisty and determined game providing some headaches for Frank before he managed to prevail. Julio Silva continued on a successful path by beating Juan Pablo Brzezicki, winning the admiration of a large & boisterous crowd, and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi looked pretty spectacular in his victory over Rogerio Dutra Silva. It was a sorry sight to see Lars Burgsmuller forced to retire in pain.
Making the finest impression among the men and winning my hard-to-please partner's great admiration was the Belgian Steve Darcis. What a strong and exciting player to watch; he seems to have it all: serve, return, depth, speed, variety, stamina. He scored an impressive win over Jan Minar who was playing quite well in his own right. Darcis faces Silva next. (Photo of Steve Darcis after the match; he got into the main Draw...deservedly!}
On the women's side, Zi Yan took a long time to close out the pudgy and endearing Finn Emma Laine. Laine simply refused to surrender, driving the second set to a prolonged tie-breaker and delaying the celebration of the Chinese fans. Yan finally did prevail, then was engulfed by admirers. {Photos: Laine & Yan at the net; Yan meeting her army of fans after the victory.}
Tian Tian Sun, who I have so enjoyed watching in the past, was not having such a good day but China's newest bright light, Shuai Zhang, won over French wildcard entrant Violette Huck. Huck looked impressive in the warm-up but couldn't get things in gear once the match started. I did think both Laine and Huck had lots of promise. Yet another Chinese, Shengnan Sun, bounced back from an injury time-out to win her match.
The day was again spoiled to an extent by the inattentive small children who had been brought to the Open by thoughtless parents. No one seems to benefit from this practice: the kids are bored to death and restless, the parents cannot watch the matches because they are constantly dealing with either the demands or the naughtiness of their children, and patrons who have come to seriously watch tennis (a decreasing percentage of the total audience, it seems) are stuck with all manner of noise and distractions.
Late in the afternoon the clouds finally broke and it was a beautiful evening as we watched Zi Yan under the lights and joined in the celebration of her win. The Tennis Center looks really nice as evening settles and the heat dissipates. Here I am, sunburnt, way up in the stands with the court lights coming on. It was so lovely spending the whole day there with Wei.
At left, three photos of Pakistani Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi greeting fans after his win over Rogerio Dutka Silva. Qureshi played beautifully throughout the qualifying tournament and seemed on his way into the main draw when he was forced to retire after the second set of his Friday match against Scoville Jenkins. Qureshi really impressed me with his tennis, his sportsmanship and his kindness in meeting the fans after his matches. It's too bad he couldn't complete his run.
Below, the China Dolls: Zi Yan (2), Shuai Zhang (2) and Shengnan Sun. Yan has had some fine successes already in her career and she has progressed into the main draw here this year. She has two prior Grand Slam titles in women's doubles.
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