The second round at the Mercedez Open

I took a personal day to go watch the second round of the Mercedez Open with Herbie. It really felt unreal seeing Kuerten, Safin and Haas on a tennis court, in flesh and blood and not just as electrons bouncing off the TV screen.

To start the day, I almost bumped into Taylor Dent as he was making his way to play Max Mirnyi on one of the outer courts. Because I had never seen him before on TV, my initial impression when I first saw him was that he was some no name doubles player. Anyway, we were able to catch Dent-Mirnyi 6 rows from courtside, so close that you could here the ball whizzing through the air after they hit it.

We scurried over to stadium court afterwards to catch World #1 Guga, dressed in his signature yellow, walking behind the baseline between points like a flimsy piece of melty rubber. I think this guy is made of just tendons and bones, just like the skeleton dummy in biology class.

After the Kuerten match, we caught Safin-Malisse where Malisse upset Safin in two sets. A lot of baseline groundstroke brilliance in that one.