Mornin', everyone. Just a few thoughts, only indirectly related to Roland Garros, to set the table for y'all for the day's actions (Rosangel has been relieved of her posting duties for the rest of the tournament; her heart just isn't into it, and we all know about that, right?).
I never had a chance to mention it yesterday (this little business between Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling got in the way), but I was collected at Charles DeGaulle airport in the morning by my long-time friend (and TennisWorld's original female Poster of the Year), MarieJ. As many of you know, she's a devouted Rafaelista, so yesterday was not a very good day for her. I hope to hook up with her and her lovely sister Isabelle later this week.
Not long ago, MarieJ took the plunge and started her own French language blog (with her journalist sweetheart, Guillaume), so if you speak French (or merely parlez TennisWorld), drop by and say "hi." You have to register but it's easy and it will help build the site.
It was too late to eat by the time I returned to my hotel last night. I'm at a place called the Oceania, and I think the gods decided to have pity on me after suffering my compaints for years about the size and "infrastructure" of the typical Parisian hotel bathroom.
Well, my chambers at the Oceania are like a three-room suite of novel design on a Lilliputian scale. It consists of a small toilet/sink in a room you might otherwise mistake for a coat closet, a shower/sink combo in another, and, basically, my queen-sized bed and a tiny desk and wardrobe jammed into a third. I have one perfectly square window above my bed. The largest of my three "rooms" (by far) is the shower, which is subdivided into the sink and shower areas, with the shower behind a nice, green-tinted glass door. And talk about water pressure!
I used to rate hotels at home and abroad by the water pressure in the shower (where there was one at all), and let me tell you, the Oceania gets five stars for water pressure, and the temperature range is impressive.I always punished hotels heavily in my ratings for having "faux cold" (lukewarm) water, although the hot spigot is usually adequate. Since I like to finish every shower with about 60 seconds of the coldest water, to create the feeling that I just bathed in a mountain stream, my contentment with the Oceania should be obvious. Still, the whole layout is tres bizarre, but in a good way.
And for laughs there's always the hotel "bar", which is furnished in the Star Trek sensibility and surrounds a sunken, glassed-off indoor pool. When I wandered in hoping to forage last night, Best of the CocaineEra disco music was blaring. I looked around quickly, to see if I could spot Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summers, or Richard Gasquet, but there were no (as in "zero") patrons.
There were, however, five people frolicking in the pool and it was weird to watch them yelling and carrying on, without hearing a sound. The bar did make me a decent beef carpaccio, though, and I enjoyed it with a nice, tall draft beer as I pondered this alarming expression of decor and taste, wishing they would turn down the music.
Well, Serena just crushed Alexandra Wozniak. Wouldn't it be just like Serena to win this whole danged thing? I'll try to catch her presser, but it's going to get short shrift today; I'm especially interested in the Del Potro vs. Tsonga match, as well as Roddick vs. Monfils.
Enjoy the tennis!
- Pete
As at 9am TW time, an overflow post has been set up - Andrew Burton
Note: as at 5.15 a.m. TW time on Day 10, a fresh post has been set up for you to talk pending the arrival of today's Crisis Center - Rosangel