15 - Hate

Xteen and I went to this yesterday.

I gotta tell you...it was a phenomenal time.

I used to LOVE watching tennis as a kid, with all of the personalities and talent. It's been diluted quite a bit for me for awhile though. The men's game seems to lack "characters" like McEnroe and Connors, while the top players all win with giant booming serves. The volley game is largely lost among the top players.

Other than liking female tennis for the obvious reasons, I prefer to watch it because there's much more volleying and geometry involved. I saw a match last year...it was one of the Williams sisters and Lindsay Davenport and one of the rallies lasted for about 25 strokes. That's tennis. I'll take that over 75% of the points being won on a 125 mph serve. Besides, Martina Hingis looks way better in a short skirt than Roger Federer does.

But this thing we went to yesterday was so awesome, because these are all the guys I grew up watching and idolizing. I still like playing tennis, but I suck. But when I would play as a kid, I would emulate these guys. And to see them play in a tiny place was an absolute treat.

The other cool thing about this tournament was that it was more of an exhibition of older players, so, while the intesity and quality of play are still really up there, there's a light-heartedness among the players. Lots of them joking with the crowd, with the umpire, with each other, all during the course of the match. It was more like a show. And it was very entertaining.

Our first match saw Aaron Krickstein beat the fiery Swede Mats Wilander. People forget, but in the late 80s, Wilander was about as dominant as Sampras was in the 90s. Truly a special player with a funny disposition on the court. I was rooting for Mats, so naturally, he lost in straight sets.

The second match we got to see was a doozy. One of my favorite players post-youth, Goran Ivanisivic (who is actually YOUNGER than me, by the way), took on the legendary brat himself, John McEnroe. While I had little doubt that McEnroe would win this match by hook or by crook (since the winner would advance to the finals today), it was such an entertaining match. We had the obligatory McEnroe melt-downs (all acts, to be sure, though he started to carry it a little too far toward the end) and we had Goran mugging it up for the TV cameras and those folks lucky enough to have seats down each end. He even chatted it up with the crowd while McEnroe seethed at a call or just needed a couple of minutes to catch his breath (he's 47 years old and still in excellent playing shape...and he still has his game).

McEnroe won in an abbreviated third set tiebreaker (they had to wrap up the match early so the evening session could start on time). But it was just an excellent time and if they come back next year, we are sure to go.

But as they were funneling us out, we noticed that McEnroe was staying around on the side of the court signing autographs for pretty much everyone. I asked Xteen if she wanted to go down and try to get it. Usually, she is pretty shy about that sort of thing, but surprisingly was all for it. So she went down and so did I, snapping pictures. We passed the program between us a few times as McEnroe paced in front of the crowd signing everything from ticket stubs to giant tennis balls that made me feel a little inadequate. Ahem.

Anyway, Xteen got McEnroe's autograph, which is SO cool, because he is literally one of the best tennis players to ever play the game. A Hall of Famer. She also thought that her older brother would like his autograph, so I went back down there with a ticket to try and get one for him. Once down there, I saw that there were some event employees facilitating the autograph process by taking things from people and giving them to McEnroe to sign. Granted, there were a lot of kids there, but there were some adults too. So, this lady has her hand out waiting for someone to give her something to give to McEnroe and I hand her my ticket stub. She looks at it and then looks at me and makes this wretched face:

Her lips were a little more pursed, but you get the idea. Then, she gives my ticket stub back to me in a huff with the obvious look of "how dare you, a grown man, ask for an autograph of someone you grew up watching. I'm here to help the crumb-grabbers who don't know John McEnroe from Patrick McEnroe get an autograph that they will undoubtedly take to school on Monday and trade for the one Garbage Pail Kid trading card they need to round out their collection."

What a bitch.

It doesn't help that I am a total geek fanboy, though. I love collecting autographs and photographs with people I admire...musicians, sports figures, swimsuit models (that collection still has ZERO items, so if there any swimsuit models who read Dim City....)

I was seriously considering saying to Llama Lady that "the autograph is for my son and he's a little scared to come down himself, because the last time he tried to do something like this, he fell out of his wheelchair and broke his only good arm."

But I'm all about karma, so I refrained.

Advantage:

Dim.