Kids Day

As I exited the train station this morning and began walking to the tennis centre a lady starts talking to me. Soon a girl comes from behind and asks if we were going to the tennis. I said yes and asked if she is German. She said yes. I'm getting quite good at recognising the Germans now. Her accent didn't sound like the Petkovic/Kerber one though. It turns out she's from Berlin.

It was Kids Day so children under 16 entered free. Kids everywhere. I went to the Jankovic/Paszek match and it was basically packed to the rafters! I watched a set and a bit then walked around before returning for the end of the match. There were quite some good rallies. Next up was Görges/Kuznetsova. It was just a coincidence that I ended up sitting next to the German girl I mentioned earlier. Julia won the first set comfortably so I went over to see Pliskova/Errani. The second set was in progress at that stage. When I came in it looked promising with both players on serve, holding serve. That was short lived. Karolina was trying to end the points quickly with drop shots but ended up making unforced errors and receiving passing shorts from Sara. So the match ended and I went back to the Germans.

The rest of the second set of Görges/Kuznetsova was a close contest. I don't really remember that much of it. In the third Julia had one excellent service game and the rest were quite ordinary. She hit some nice forehand winners. I stayed for a bit of Mayer's match before going for a walk. It was about 4 o'clock and I already began thinking of going home.

With regards to the stricter time violation warning rules, I've witnessed two this week. First for Cibulkova and the other was for Sousa. Needless to say neither player was happy to receive it and both complained afterwards further delaying play. I don't think either points were extraordinarily slow. They were both preparing to serve anyways so it's pretty pointless to give them a warning if they would have served after one more bounce.

As I was contemplating leaving I see a friend who gives me a ticket into KRA. Ebden's match was about to begin but I wasn't interested in seeing him. After a while I went to watch the entirety of the Goerges/Hantuchova and Petrova/Srebotnik match. As that ended Stosur/Zheng was set to begin. There were quite a lot of people staying for that match which was scheduled for not before 5pm. A suspicion was that it was to give Stosur a chance, not having to play in the heat like the rest of the other players. It ended up starting at 6.30pm. Sun setting. Cool conditions. The match was good, a lot of exciting rallies, baseline to baseline stuff. Heaps of winners and balls that just misses the lines. Eva Asderaki looked like she had a cold but was spot on with her overrule. Despite Sam losing in the first round again, I think she didn't play poorly. Zheng played really well, hung in there and returned everything.