EPTThe BNP Paribas Open
Sometime earlier in the week, on Monday or Tuesday, I’m watching TV in the living room or something equally mundane when my mom comes in and says “’Kay. We’re going to Indian Wells this weekend, leaving at 9.” Maybe it was Thursday the week of. Anyway, a few days pass and I wake up on Saturday at about 8:30am. My mom’s telling me we need to go to avoid traffic (which there was none of on the trip there, by the way). Later, at about 10:30, she’s yelling at me to get my ass out of bed so we can finally head down there.
When we finally got there, well… shit. My mom (‘cause saying/typing “mother” is awkward as hell) parks at a school roughly 10 minutes away walking. We trudge across the open grass parking lot with the sun bearing down on us (it’s noon in the damn desert) and finally arrive at the North Gate. We get in line to buy General Admission tickets for Sunday and get them from this really cute girl who I would never have expected to be working there as the other employees I saw were all seniors. I’m busy daydreaming during the whole thing and staring at my face in a teller-window reflection (got zits invading my face, what the fuck) and manage to throw a “you too” in after she sends us off with a “have a nice day.”
Now, onto the best part: We’re finally heading inside! Holy shit!! And it’s only about noon so I was definitely going to get a chance to see all the people I wanted to see – Ivanovic, Djokovic, Roddick, and Nadal. Why only them? Because before Saturday I hadn’t even actually played tennis in months, let alone watched any of it. There were two stops to make: the first had staff checking bags and purses and the like, while the second was ticket scanning. The first goes by with no problem, but as we entered the actual premises, the old man checking tickets tells us “sorry, these are evening tickets. I can’t let you in ‘til past 4.” This is where, in my head, I’m just smashing his shriveled face on the floor because WHAT THE FUCK? Really? Though, I guess this is more the fault of my mom for buying reserve seat tickets for night matches (she wanted to see Blake) than it was his.
At our hotel a 10-minute drive away (that was stretched out because our stupid GPS kept saying to make a u-turn a street ahead of where we needed to be despite a perfectly efficient and available left), we checked in quickly and got to our room. It was pretty big for just the two of us, coming with a separate living room/kitchen combo. It wasn’t necessary to our goals, but it was cool to have nonetheless.
Four and a half hours of us eating at Panda Express (I’m a whore for Panda and have picked the same 2 entrees for the past 10 years at least… every single time) me spamming F5 in the KTF-SKT threads and watching a gymnastics movie with Nastia Liukin (sp?) as a cameo later, we head back. We go back to the school we parked at to find that it’s closed off via cone/pylon wall. Awesome as she is, my mom decides to cheat the “no re-entry after 4” sign and drives our siege tank of a minivan in the exit opening and parks where we parked before. The parking attendant she waves off by telling him we had already paid and that the pass (we got a parking pass/ticket on the way in) said it was good until midnight. He lets us go and we finally (FINALLY!!) head in to the arena itself.
Notice that in the snooze fest that was Saturday, I’d already been awake… *does math* about 7.5 hours doing NOTHING. Not a single useful thing. Now that we were finally inside, this was my chance to finally do something awesome… finally. Did I mention it was final?
Day One
We walk around for a while, checking out the different open booths and whatnot (my eyes were crowd-surfing the moment I got there. And, by the way, before we went in I saw that the cute cashier girl from earlier was still working). Mounted on the outside of Stadium 1 was a jumbotron of sorts broadcasting the game within. Below that came a second equally large screen scrolling through the scores of the day. FUCK!! IVANOVIC WAS DONE! The person I wanted to see the most, and my hopes were dashed across the floor like a wrestler utilizing centripetal force to catapult a small child across a poorly smoothed (and thus jagged) parking lot. Federer was still playing Giquel, I believe, but our evening tickets weren’t going to get us into the last match of the day session.
Instead, she opted to just walk around for another while and watch what we wanted to watch before meeting up later for Jankovic v Pavlyuchenkova and Blake v Nieminen.
I head straight off to watch Hantuchova v Wicmayer. Why them? Because, from our time browsing the matches, I saw that “damn, those two are hot.” There were, admittedly, better matches to behold (Ancic v Lubicic, Verdasco going up against someone), but this was the one I wanted to see. From what I recall of it, it was a fun match to watch. I was too busy gawking at them and taking pictures to actually care about what was going on.
That reminds me… it started a while ago, my mom’s sudden fascination with QVC. She would buy random things on there and when it came in, she would try to figure out whether or no we would actually use whatever it was that she bought. One of these pre-purpose items was a camera, a Photosmart r837 to replace our now very obsolete Powershot. After grabbing the camera from my pocket and remembering my high school Photo I classes, I thought “shit, it’d be cool if I could get a couple nice action shots in this lighting.” Tell you right now, Nevergg is a damn pro being able to get the shots she shoots at the different events and whatnot.
With my
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![[image loading]](http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/2866/hpim0661.png)
My best shot from the Hantuchova match. The only good thing about it, I guess, is the timing.
I gave up on trying to follow the game when, out of the blue, my phone read 7 o’clock. The game was coming up close in the third (couldn’t tell you the score when I left for my life), but I had to go meet up with my mom in Stadium 1 for our evening matches. The first of 2 evening matches was Pavlyuchenkova v Jankovic. This was on it’s own a fun game to watch. Pavvy’s aggressive power style I totally enjoyed as she played like I used to and loved to play: hit hard and keep hitting hard until someone fucks it all up. Still, my mind was on Hantuchova and Wicmayer’s final set.
The Concession Stand
At one point, I got up to grab hotdogs and a drink. Great timing on Mom’s part as, when she sent me off, the TV above the concession stand was broadcasting Hantuchova’s match. Shit, it was close. In retrospect, I really should have just stayed there to watch. Too bad, I guess, but I had to head back to our seats not knowing who came up victorious. When I got back, it was only to watch Pavvy gradually break down Jankovic by constantly bitch-slapping the ball, catching the Serb off-balance, and finally blasting a shot into the deuce-side corner. Sure, there came the occasional backhand winner in the same fashion, but for the most part points fell into Pavvy’s rhythm.
Finally, Blake’s game came. All I really recall of this game was Nieminen’s epic monster of a backhand that just had its own tendency to fire back with more power than Blake’s serve, Blake’s complete domination laced with totally unnecessary unforced errors, and me checking my phone after every point. This was James Blake playing, the United States’ top player, but why wasn’t I watching? Well, the results for Hantuchova’s match were still in my mind as I didn’t even find out the victor until the next day. More importantly, however, IT WAS TEN O’-FUCKING-CLOCK. The KTF-SKT playoff was scheduled to start at any time. And yet, here I am watching Blake dominate Nieminen’s forehand and serve while doing only so much with his backhand. Despite all this, the game went to three sets (and a tiebreak in the second).
I think this was the game Blake had 47 unforced errors while Nieminen only had… 10?
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![[image loading]](http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1092/hpim0647.png)
He practiced earlier in the day for 47 errors?
WL Playoff Spoilers
The game ended at roughly 11:30. At this point, I was hoping that 815 hadn’t all-killed SKT with his above-the-top X-class play. I mean, this guy totally was the one who taught Flash how to play. On the way out of Stadium 1, I texted my friend Steger who I assumed was in his dorm with a bunch of friends watching the playoff… Flash lost to Fantasy? What the flying fudge-packing fuck had to happen? I smirked when I read that Child-Labor Terran was ousted with an outside-the-box 8rax build. Hoejja sniping Bisu was probably THE news for me that night.
Filing slowly out of Stadium 1 were all the spectators heading off to Stadium 2. The lights shattered the night sky and distant cheers reached our ears, so my mom and I went off to see what it was all about. Leyton Hewitt. “AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI OI!!” This was a pretty awesome game just with the spectators. The seats were packed so I couldn’t get a spot to actually see what was going on, but half the crowd was pulling for Hewitt while the other voiced their support for Fernando Gonzalez. Still, despite the excitement of the game, we had to go: Mom was getting sleepy and it was a streetlamp-less drive back to our hotel. Inside, the first things I did were change out of my shoes into Rainbows, and logged into the WiFi to see that… the greatest news of the night came within sight. KTF had dominated SKT 4-2. I bet things would have been different if Boxer had played.
Day Two
I woke up at 8:30… again. Seriously, I need to go to sleep earlier on the weekends. 6.5 hours does nothing when I usually stay in bed to noon from midnight or 2.
When we pulled in to our hotel, the Quality Inn, the day before, I figured that there weren’t going to be any cute girls there. How could I immediately make such a baseless assumption? Old people and only old people were sunbathing in the pool area. Ugh. Still, I’m glad I was wrong. I traipsed my way into the dining hall for the place’s Continental Breakfast and there before me was a cute young-looking person (note that she’s cute not hot and age unspecified so for all I knew she was/is over 18).
After a time of not having any trouble parking, we went off to root for Mardy Fish, who my mom pointed out was the third-highest American in the world… she also felt it necessary to point out that being the third American meant he was surprisingly lower than the rank would normally imply. We stuck around for part of the first set before moving on to see more of the same sights. By now, it was 12:10. Not paying attention to the schedule, we decided that sitting down for good seats to watch Djokovic in the GA area way the hell up in the grandstands was a good idea. It really wasn’t as brilliant as we’d hoped: first thing we got there, we found that this Serb’s game was to start at 1. “Dammit,” we thought.
Surprisingly, things weren’t that bad. Mom told me to just walk around for a while and watch things while she saved our seats. I love you, Mom.
I took the walk down the 3 flights of stairs (no, there totally weren’t any elevators to steal my chance at exercise >.>) and checked my match list. I remembered the name Ferrer but didn’t care much of it, Zvonereva’s match on Stadium 1 was over and done with (I would have had to walk back up to watch it anyway…), so it was off to root for Wozniacki. I saw her name on TV a few times during coverage of the random not-Grand-Slam open tournaments on The Tennis Channel, though it was only in passing: I waved her off as another victim to a Williams sister, I think. Still, with a name so unique as her’s, I couldn’t help but to lend her my cheer.
I Hate Being Shy
Kaia Kanepi had an equally attractive name as Wozniacki, but I didn’t much like her. I found myself a seat in the first row of general seating for their court (a really nice seat right by the net) and got comfy. I can’t for the life of me remember anything about this set outside of Wozzy’s awesome defense. It was nowhere near Jankovic’s level as she constantly swiped Pavvy’s power shots back in from way off ahead of herself, but as someone who holds his defense as his highest-leveled skill, I was totally in love with it.
Despite her sexy run-the-damn-ball-down-and-keep-it-in-play-no-matter-what style, all I could hear from the crowd were random cries of “ai-yai Ka-yahhhh” or “c’mon, Ka-yahhh” with an emphasis on the Y. I’m personally more a fan of “Kai-uh” than anything. No one cheering for Wozzy was actually audible. I mean, honestly, how hard is it to raise your voice a little so the one you want to win can hear you? When I played as a starter on my high school’s JV team (hell yeah, JV!), I was almost never cheered for. Whenever I did hear my friends and teammates egging me to win (rare as it was), I would always feel reinvigorated despite whatever score was called in the cards. I’m sure that at the S-class level, things like cheers are only falling on deaf ears and trained wave-the-arm-or-racquet responses, but… not so much about the lesser-known players.
It took a while of hesitating between points for me to finally yell “let’s go, Caroline,” but I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel good. Now, I don’t know if it was just me tuning them out or something, but I could suddenly hear other people cheering for Wozzy. From there, she went on to win in the third. Happy with myself, I left with the crowd before… whoever it was that asked the winners questions, could do his job (following Jankovic’s epic ousting, it pissed me off that the person felt so totally compelled to constantly refer to this as “the biggest win in her career”) and moved on.
Craybas was another name I’d seen on TV – and another semi-no-name was listed as being against Vaidisova (Google says she’s not Russian, wtf?!?). This seemed like another Battle of the Epic Names, and of course I trotted my jolly little self down there. The greatest part of the game had to be that I didn’t look at the score after getting a seat.
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![[image loading]](http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/2241/5fitnesscraybas.jpg)
This bitch will kill you, your mom, your dog, and your cheese omelet.
~ Not my photo, obviously.
As I sat down, I had no idea who to cheer on. Both had names I found appealing but Crabas was playing for the advancement of the post-Davenport advancement of the United States of America (FUCK YEAH!!) in a tournament devoid of our only actual hope the Williams sisters. The sun was far from setting and provided the best possible opportunity to take pictures, but alas, my camera was stuck in the van. Silly me, leaving such an important tool out of
Mantoss. As my seat was closer to her, I quickly discerned Vaidisova to be the more attractive of the two, wishing her luck in my head as I watched her handily backhand Craybas across the face point after point. I was so wrong… Out of nowhere, Crabs turned on a switch and unleashed her crabhammer of destruction with amazing down-the-line winners coming in one after the other. Then I noticed the score. Shit. This is my fault for doubting the fury of nuke-arms over there on the other side. The match ended shortly after this power-up. As Vaidisova and Craybas made their respective exits, I noticed a throng of eager autograph-awaiting audience members standing in their way. Sadly, I was directly on the other side of the court and could thus not participate in any of their shenanigans. I got out of my seat and took the walk to the signings, wanting to see Craybas up close as was impossible before. Even sadder, I never got the chance. I found an angle I could see them at, these people being Craybas and her entourage of staff to escort her to the player housing. That was the closest I got to seeing her up close.
Have You Ever Seen Rapes Vulgar Enough to Ache Your Penis?
To be absolutely fair, I’m not exaggerating in the slightest. I went back to Stadium 1 to find that Safina and Peng had started their match in the sense that they were still being introduced. Let me tell you something up front: Safina is a damned scary player. Poor Peng could do nothing as she was completely and open-buttcheekingly raped. By far the most interesting part of this game, however, was not in how brutally beaten and left in a ditch Peng was, but rather in her determination to play on despite the overbearing strength of her opponent. Of particular brow-raising spectacle was the miracle of Peng’s dual backhand. Where else can you see such a thing? I’ve known ambidextrous players to play with dual forehands, but to have dual 2-handed backhands was something I’d never heard of. Possibly due to the extra strength of the form, the Chinese’ defense of Safina’s hammering was fun to watch while it lasted.
Then it was over and the pigs from outside herded themselves in. The crowd-drawing Spaniard, who as the commentator pointed out has constantly been eluded by a US Open title, was about to make his entry. As he at the mic began introducing the first player to enter, the crowd roared with apprehension. I was relatively indifferent in all this, choosing instead to show my support when they the players were actually doing things worth cheering for. Though I did laugh, when Berrer was the first to be named and the crowd immediately died down following his appearance.
Watching Nadal go against the German was… well. Refer to the following:
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![[image loading]](http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/5654/19493825.gif)
Berrer, Nadal’s opponent, can be seen as the little gir’s swimsuit: even less in control than the girl wearing him.
Yes, Nadal is the current strongest in the world, ruling in the same fashion as
At the end of the set, my mom and I had decided watching any more was pointless: the winner was obvious and we had to take the 2 hour drive home for work and school the next day. Our journey through Indian wells ended a trip to the Kettle Corn booth. This proved to be a genius decision on my part, as I egged her into buying me a $6 bag of it freshly made. Shit was so cash.
~~
Disclaimer:
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I’m quite sure I flubbed my mental timeline in typing this, but I’m too lazy to go back and take the 5 minutes to highlight-drag things to where they need to be.
- Kanepi v Wozzy, I think came first.
- Then the wait for Djokovic and watching Craybas
- Then Craybas ended and I watched Djokovic for a bit, then left.
- Demoed a red Babolat racquet at the Tennis Warehouse tent
- Then Safina, then Nadal.
Not much of an error, I guess, but on that note…
Djokovic is an incredibly interesting player to watch. He is, in essence, Lee Sungeun armed with the face-twitching power of Lee Youngho. He’s a flashy player, as proved by his first service game against... Arguello of Argentina. He serves on the deuce side. I don’t care to remember the result here. He serves on the ad side. Suddenly, in the motion of his first serve, WIFF!! His racquet flies out of his hand and smashes across the court, pointing to his bag as if begging to be replaced. We all start laughing, from the people in the grandstands to the ref, and I think even Arguello was controlling himself against the all-for-fun delay of game. Following this came gradual destruction befitting of one ranked top 4 in the world. Sure, I thought that for that prestigious a position the Serb’s performance was lacking, but at the same time it was amazing. His Jackknife rising backhand (or at least, I think he was taking shots off the rise with it. Damned cheapseats!) echoed throughout the stadium. His trap card, the beyond-well-disguised backhand drop shot, was phenomenal. I couldn’t tell you how many times I saw Arguello fall for it completely.
The absolute worst part of this match had to be that, while I was there, two people on my left just would not shut the fuck up. I mean, really, is it so hard to not talk like you knew what the hell you were talking about DURING points? I wouldn’t have complained remotely as much, but then I heard the elder of the two tell his friend “I have to write down the racquets that the pros use,” to which his partner asked “why not just find something you like? He in turn said, much to the mental facepalm of myself, “I post better results with racquets the pros use.” What the hell? That’s like saying using bumblebeesuit’s football mouse is going to suddenly drastically increase not only your APM, but also your multitask to the point that harassing three separate bases WHILE committing to macro and general main-army micro sequences. It was after only so much of this that we, both my mom and myself, chose to leave the idiots to themselves and find other things to do.
- Kanepi v Wozzy, I think came first.
- Then the wait for Djokovic and watching Craybas
- Then Craybas ended and I watched Djokovic for a bit, then left.
- Demoed a red Babolat racquet at the Tennis Warehouse tent
- Then Safina, then Nadal.
Not much of an error, I guess, but on that note…
Djokovic is an incredibly interesting player to watch. He is, in essence, Lee Sungeun armed with the face-twitching power of Lee Youngho. He’s a flashy player, as proved by his first service game against... Arguello of Argentina. He serves on the deuce side. I don’t care to remember the result here. He serves on the ad side. Suddenly, in the motion of his first serve, WIFF!! His racquet flies out of his hand and smashes across the court, pointing to his bag as if begging to be replaced. We all start laughing, from the people in the grandstands to the ref, and I think even Arguello was controlling himself against the all-for-fun delay of game. Following this came gradual destruction befitting of one ranked top 4 in the world. Sure, I thought that for that prestigious a position the Serb’s performance was lacking, but at the same time it was amazing. His Jackknife rising backhand (or at least, I think he was taking shots off the rise with it. Damned cheapseats!) echoed throughout the stadium. His trap card, the beyond-well-disguised backhand drop shot, was phenomenal. I couldn’t tell you how many times I saw Arguello fall for it completely.
The absolute worst part of this match had to be that, while I was there, two people on my left just would not shut the fuck up. I mean, really, is it so hard to not talk like you knew what the hell you were talking about DURING points? I wouldn’t have complained remotely as much, but then I heard the elder of the two tell his friend “I have to write down the racquets that the pros use,” to which his partner asked “why not just find something you like? He in turn said, much to the mental facepalm of myself, “I post better results with racquets the pros use.” What the hell? That’s like saying using bumblebeesuit’s football mouse is going to suddenly drastically increase not only your APM, but also your multitask to the point that harassing three separate bases WHILE committing to macro and general main-army micro sequences. It was after only so much of this that we, both my mom and myself, chose to leave the idiots to themselves and find other things to do.
Poll: What should I use to get autographs next year?
(Vote): Giant fuzzy green ball
(Vote): A white jacket
(Vote): Pictures of each player I go to see printed on photo paper
