Tennis and My Camera: To Paris for a brief visit to magical Roland Garros

Hello! Long time no blog...stuff real life getting in the way of Tennis.

These days I really haven't been getting to anywhere near as much tennis as usual/liked but I was determined to at least see some of Roland Garros live. Original plans were to go last week but when I saw the draw (and the forecast for last Thursday), I hedged my bets and went for second Monday, with the potential promise of a match between my 2 favourite one handers Gasquet and Wawrinka. Well a lot of drama later including a last minute dash to own a ticket to the right court, I got what I wanted. The matchup that I had so much anticipated for years (last meeting in 2006) more than lived up to expectations and was simply breathtaking to watch, especially the 4th set. Unfortunately my pictures of the day could no way do the atmosphere and sheer thrill of this match justice, seems I find it hard to focus in emotional moments but I will share some of my day here anyway, if only for the chance to relive the pleasure (needed after just having the QF of pain that followed).

Arriving to a cloudy, freezing cold and miserable Paris morning (but Paris remained beautiful):

After musing around Paris for a couple of hours, I made my way to Roland Garros just in time for the first match of the day on Suzanne Lenglen between Haas and Youzhny. All 4 men on Lenglen today possessed a beautiful single handed BH, which was great for me. Alas Misha had one of his walkabout days today and so this match was a bit of a procession for Haas but not to take away from his brilliant tournament. I was very happy to see Haas make his first RG QF and complete his Grand Slam QF set. At 35, he's the oldest RG QFist in 40 or so years, very impressive.

Good Morning Roland Garros

Haas defeat Youzhny

After Haas’ win I went for a stroll around the grounds, particularly with checking out the Juniors in mind. In the end I settled on a very nice quality match between the Romanian Luca George Tatomir and Mexican Lucas Gomez. This was a nice contrast of styles and really set a good standard with exciting rallies, when Tatomir wasn’t cranking his big serve down. After watching this I had the intention to watch some of Dimitrov/Nielsen vs Peya/Soares but got distracted by leisurely watching Djokovic’s match outside Court 1, whilst finally grabbing a late lunch. It was nice to chill for a while, especially as a Band was also playing making a nice background sound.

Anyway, since my personal anticipation and stress was building for my big game and Kirilenko was getting closer to winning, I returned to Lenglen.

Kirilenko defeating Mattek-Sands

My special match: Wawrinka d. Gasquet 6-7 (5) 4-6 6-4 7-5 7-6. If only they could have both won (and the preceding match never had to happen…c’est le sport)