Queen's Club Your Call, 6.9

Good morning all. I spent yesterday at Queen's Club visiting the Aegon Championships at Queen's Club. While I haven't yet had time to sort out all of the pictures taken during the day, I've uploaded a selection on this link. Use the arrows to page through, and any thumbnail can be enlarged by clicking on it.

It's my second year representing TW at the tournament; as was the case last year, the majority of my time was spent taking pictures beside the court, which is always the best vantage point for getting close-ups of the players. There are however several viewpoints available to photographers. I like the one just between Court 1 and the Centre Court, where there's always something going on - at one point I was following three matches - singles between Grigor Dimitrov and Ivan Navarro, another singles match involving Paul-Henri Mathieu and Andrei Pavel, and the day's big doubles match between the pairings of Andy Murray and Lleyton Hewitt, and Andy Roddick and Rajeev Ram.

The doubles matches at the tournament aren't usually televised, but they can be one of the day's highlights for those watching live, as proved to be the case yesterday. We don't usually see the top singles players in doubles, and it's likely that even if Andy Roddick hadn't been on the other side of the net, the team of Murray and Hewitt would have been scheduled on Centre Court. The match was played in good spirits by all concerned, but also competitively, requiring a match tiebreak to resolve it. The three singles players are all taking their singles challenge seriously this year, and Hewitt had already won his match over Eduardo Schwank earlier in the day, with ease. Unsurprisingly, Murray and Hewitt ventured to the net a lot, even though on occasions it wasn't clear to them which player should be dealing with the shot coming over at them.

Otherwise the best performance I saw yesterday came from the 2007 finalist, Nicolas Mahut. He's already been through the qualifying tournament, and that's probably one reason why his aggressive brand of grasscourt tennis was clicking so well.

From where I was seated the grass looks a little bit slick, given the damp and chilly conditions, and it was possible to see some of the skid-marks where players had been sliding on it. The day remained dry, however, with just a few fine droplets in the air towards the evening. We may not be as lucky today - some light rain is forecast.

I'll be leaving home soon - more from me tomorrow.

-- Rosangel Valenti