It just so happened that our biking vacation in France overlapped with the beginning of the French Open, so we seized the opportunity. Also, being the ever thoughtful husband, I knew Ann wanted a day to shop unencumbered by a spouse looking over her shoulder (;)).
So, we grabbed the no. 6 metro line to the no. 10 and hopped off at Porte D'autueil Station, and followed the line of people to the fabled red clay courts of the french.
As we worked our way back to through the grounds, we felt familiar sights and sounds of tennis fans excitedly talking about the day's matches, and hawkers of expensive tennis clothes in fancy shops scattered throughout the grounds.
But there the similarities faded. Our (inexpensive) grounds passes were only good for the non-stadium' courts. The grounds were very compact and the pathways were narrow, making movement between courts very slow. Also, the arbiters of entry, nicely dressed in suits and dresses, were very stingy about letting people in the courts. So we were glad to have arrived at the red clay of court 17 early for the match between Tommy Haas and a Turkish player (rank 123) named Ilhan. It was an entertaining match, but we concluded Haas was not 100 percent, because he seemed to basically concede the match after a while. The tennis was good quality, but not great. The seats were very nice, being only a few rows above the court and fairly near the middle. The sun was getting intense by the end though, and we were hungry and thirsty.
The food prices weren't too bad, though it was clearly mass produced fare; a baguette with ham and cheese, chips, beer, and cookies.
Next we were off to court 7 to cheer on American Mardy Fish (rank 10), a player both Kevin and I like. Mardy was playing high level tennis for the most part, and despite some spirited rallies from a guy named Mello, including a 20 point tie-breaker which Fish lost (11-9), the americans had something to cheer about in the end. I especially liked it when the French umpire said 'jeu Fish' after each game he won.
We next tried to get into court 2 where Marcos Baghdatis, another entertaining player, was playing his first round match. But it seemed everyone wanted to be in that court, so there was no room. Instead we watched the end of a women's match between Kirilenko and American Coco Vandeweghe. I'm afraid I was not too impressed with Coco's demeanor after she got a questionable (and critical) call from the umpire's chair on set point. She lost rather quickly after that. Kirilenko's fitness was superb.
We happened upon an entertaining match between journeyman frenchman Banoit Paire and Romanian Hanescu. Paire had taken a set from Hanescu, and despite being a crowd favorite (natch), he was a far inferior tennis player, and a bad sport to boot, so it was satisfying to see him lose.
I thought we might be done for the day, but Kevin's iPhone app told us a match was still in progress between a spaniard named Granollers and an American I had never heard of; Alex Bogomolov. We snagged fantastic court side seats to watch the last hour or so of this entertaining match! They were both superb baseline sluggers, and they had some long rallies that featured some of the best, most grueling tennis of the day. Despite playing calmly and trading shots equally with the spaniard, Bogomolov finally lost because his serve just didn't match Granollers.
So, my conclusion was that I was really glad to have visited the French open as the red clay really does provide a different kind of game. The sliding, the entertaining falls, the slightly slower traveling balls, all add an element of difference between this and a hard court tournament. I don't know if Wimbledon or the French will ever change surfaces, but I kind of hope not. While standardization of surfaces might be 'fairer' to assess who is the best tennis player, in fact the diversity of surfaces makes it doubly amazing when someone gets a career grand slam, or even more impressive, wins all four majors in one year. When that happens, I suspect you are seeing the best athlete on the planet at that that point in time.
All in all, an entertaining day at the French, celebrated later with a beer and European style pizza on Rue d'Auteuil late into the evening.
Cheers!
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