Neither rain nor clouds can scare us....
I just came back from Key Biscayne. We have a weekend of dreary, rainy weather, but that is expected to clear by tomorrow.
For today, however, it is pretty muggy and overcast out there, even for South Florida.
That didn't stop me from enjoying a few hours of one of the best-run tournaments in the country.
Great food, beautiful grounds, easy to see stadium courts, high-quality atmosphere.
Today was the first day of qualies, and there was a lot of tennis from some well-known names on deck for today. Lapentti, Guccione, Don Young, Massu, and many others.
First I stopped and watched Tsonga warming up with Gasquet. I know Pete thinks Gasquet has happy feet, but I find him up close to be a fascinating player to watch -- his flat, hard backhand accelerates through the ball and is a lot of fun to see when it connects. Tsonga is exactly as he appears on television -- gregarious, smiling, big game, big strokes, lots of personality. A big plus for tennis, as far as I can see.
I then mosied over to Center Court, where Fernando Gonzalez was playing a practice set with Guillermo Canas. From what I could see, Canas was serving very well, hitting his spots, while Gonzalez was showing the shaky play that recently let him down in IW and Sunrise.
Finally, I wound up watching fellow Miami Shores resident Asha Rolle, who some might remember from last year's US Open, playing Russian Anastasia Rodionova. Rolle was leading and about to take the set at 5-3, when Rodionova, who had been complaining of crowd noise (there were 15 of us!), managed to convince the Ump to take a rain delay. When it started up again an hour or so later, Rodionova wound up taking the set and was leading the second when I decided to head back to work.
In all, this is going to be a fantastic tournament. Buzz and lots of players and tennis fans are around and about and excited to be here, and it should -- as always -- be a lot of fun.
