Sunday, March 21, 2010

Tennis BNP Paribas Open Championships. Ljubicic wins Men's Title, Jankovic Women's. Richard Marks tale of tennis woe.

Robin and I went to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden today to watch the Open Championships. There is two weeks of competition, with amateurs also going at it from all over the US playing doubles. We took in some great amateur matches that were quite spirited. 22 Courts and thousands of fans. We were able to watch Andy Roddick warm up before the match. It made me say to Robin, "What a narcissistic sport this is!" It is all about the person as an individual in the singles realm. I have always been pretty good at tennis without really working on it. I don't know why.

When I was at Eureka High I had a teacher in Civics that always wore a tennis tie clip and I gave him a hard time about it. Somehow a challenge ensued and he invited the student body to witness. The match was to be at the Eureka Indoor/Outdoor tennis club. Which he owned. I was a cocky 17 year old that thought I would just over power him and was confident I would give him all he could handle. I was soooooo wrong. Ellis Williamson just destroyed me to the point of embarrassment and I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the year. (Ellis at the time was one of the top ranked 50 year old players in the world. My bad!)

The Women's Championship pitted 19 year old Caroline Wozniacki against Jelena Jankovic. Jelena was dominate for this match and was very gracious in victory and Caroline has now moved to 2nd in the world even though she lost. Fun to watch.

We were hoping that Andy Roddick could outplay Ivan Ljubicic to give a US player a victory, but Ivan won hearts with his hard play (And 20 aces) it was a great match to watch. There is not a bad seat at Indian Wells, and what a great organized event!

2 comments:

Ekovox said...

Richard,my former in-laws used to live up by Joshua Tree about a half-hour from where you are. The last time I was in Palm Desert or Cathedral City, I can't remember, I saw our very own Fire & Light glassware selling for 10 times what it is sold for in Arcata. YES! That's our garbage they're buying!

I love the Palm Springs area. When you come off the desert into that green oasis, it looks like what Heaven might seem like. Of course, on my salary, I'd never be able to live there and truthfully, I probably would hate it to live there...but as a visitor...Man, what a place! Rolls Royce's everywhere.

samoasoftball said...

Eko: It is really is kind of nice there. And it is funny you mention the cars. Robin and I were surrounded by high dollar cars in Indian Wells. Our PT cruiser looked po-dunk.