The pre-qualifing tournament started at Courtside last weekend for the four remaining spots on the main draw and the tennis continued at our Club as they used our indoor courts to play some of the doubles matches and for practice. Tuesday saw my sisters Christine, Mia and I going to the San Jose Arena to see Andy Murray beat Odesema 6-4 and 7-6. Odesema only got broken one time in the first set and still lost the match. Just goes to show how little seperates winning from losing in tennis during a close match, probably just a few points here or there. The second match saw Safin defeat (it will come to me) more easily than the first match.
Two more tickets fell into my hands via the tennis gods (a.k.a. Gordon Collins, Courtsides Tennis Director) on Friday while playing some tennis outdoors in some beautiful weather. Melissa and I got to go to the arena to see Roddick defeat Spadea in 3 sets. The second set was incredible as Spadea, with back against the wall, down a set, down a break and fighting elimination, broke Roddick as he was trying to serve out the match. One of the match points saw Spadea returning a Roddick smash deep into the corner with a lunging gem of his own that landed on the line deep for a winner, the crowd went wild. Talk about a "clutch" shot- Wow! Anyway, he went on to break Roddick's serve there and beat him in the tie-breaker to even the match at one set a piece (best of 3 sets). He slammed a ball down to celebrate and it bounced a hundred feet high, then he threw his racquet down. Roddick also walking back to his chair, just feet in front of us, looked over at Spadea and mimicked the spike of the racquet and said something to him. Well, Spadea sure fired up Roddick because he came out smoking in the 3rd set and really took it to a tired Spadea, who must have burnt his booster rockets out just to win the second set. Stroke for stroke he could match Roddick but while Roddick was breezing to service holds, Spadea was struggling with his and getting broken. One highlight of the match was a 140+ m.p.h. serve by Roddick returned by Spadea for a winner. The whole point took all of 7/8ths of a second to complete!
The second match saw Andy Murray (above) play another incredibly close match this time with H. Lee from Korea. Lee had incredible fluidity and grace on the court, rarely showing even an inkling of emotion either way in spite of the relevance of the points played or to be played. Andy Murray struggled a bit and was showing much more emotion, mostly in anger at himself as he missed several chances to distance himself from Lee. Lee won the first set as Murray was slow to get going (4-6) but he then bounced back to even the match in the second taking it (6-3). Once again, the night saw somebody trying to serve the match out after Murray broke Lee at 5-all, but Lee stepped it up and broke Murray back for the first time since the first set. This was huge because it set up a third set tie-breaker. Murray was besides himself but was able to refocus on the match and not let it get to him. He came back out to win the 3rd set tie-breaker and the match.Sitting down just feet from the players and the commentators interviewing them after the match, Murray took his wrist band and threw it over his head into the crowd, right at us. My hands were in my pockets stuffing my water bottle away, I reached up and got a piece of it at the last second but it was taken from me by the two women behind me. Better luck next time!
Anyway, that is it for us until mid-February next year when we will do it all again, with some of the same players returning and a host of new hopefulls arriving to our corner of the world to share with us their incredible, high speed, fast action talent! (Fastest served clocked at 149MPH)
Posted by Tennis Beat Writer, Dan
Pictures by Melissa!
