Mornin'. I'm sitting here in the Marriott Biscayne Bay hotel, in a room on the 8th floor, with a view of the port of Miami, a pea-green sea (it's the overcast), and the causeway leading to South Beach, where I'm going later to do Jaegermeister shots in a bar full of flip-flop shod scholars on spring break until I'm drunk enough to duck into a tattoo parlor to have the profile of Caroline Wozniacki tattooed across my shoulder blades. As if. . .
Actually, I nailed it pretty clean this time. As a frequent hotel guest, I can tell you it's not just where you stay, but where they put you in the joint, and that's something over which you don't always have control unless you're the type who doesn't mind changing rooms midway through a stay (I do). I can tell you this: You don't want by the ice machine. You don't want by the elevators. You don't want the view of rooftop parking, at least not when you have the big blue (on a sunny day) ocean and a dozen yachts bobbing around on their moorings just around the corner from your depressing "viewscape."
And you - or at least I - don't want the 32nd floor of the high-rise hotel. I prefer to have my boots on the ground and don't like to stay any higher above terra firma than I must. The idea of going out to one of those restaurants rotating like a giant top 500 feet above some city doesn't make me want to eat, it makes me want to puke. For me, the sweet spot is anywhere between the 5th and 10th floor. And here's the added bonus this week: my "window" is a great big sliding glass door that actually opens all the way. When I came in last night, I turned off the air-conditioning, opened the glass door and, after getting cleaned up, I settled into bed with a scotch over ice while watching the translucent white curtain billow in and out. I wished I hadn't left my book back in New York, but I lay back and fell asleep soon enough.
My flight in was delayed by a few hours, so the Gonazlez-Stepanek match was well underway when I arrived. It took some time to get my credentials and parking pass sorted out, and while I waited at the courtesy desk in the media center, a German lady photographer couldn't help but crow: Tomorrow is going to be the best day, ever! I can see why she's all fired up - the day begins with Tomas Berdych vs. Novak Djokovic (the grandstand opener isn't exactly dog poop either: Gillles Simon vs. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga) and the menu also includes a very tantalizing Andy Roddick vs. Gael Monfils, Andy Murray vs. Viktor Troicki, and either David Ferrer or Marin Cilic vs. Juan Martin del Potro. The nightcap is Rafael Nadal vs. Stan Wawrinka, just in case you aren't tennised-out.
Oh, and I failed to mention Roger Federer's match with Taylor Dent. I had time last night to write a post for ESPN on the resurgence of Dent. I may write that match today for y'all, partly because Taylor's story is a pretty inspirational one. But also because he plays high-risk, relentless attacking tennis, and he has some big serve. As some wag said of the man who invented the modern revolver: God made some men big and some men small, but Sam Colt made them equal."
This week, I'll be writing for the Tennis.com home page, much like I did during Davis Cup. But I think I'll be using some form of those files for my red-meant posts as well. We'll see how it works out. I'll keep you posted.
-- Pete
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