Legg Mason Report

Thursday, August 4th:Today was the last day that I'll have the run of the grounds in the daytime without the masses (day sessions on Friday, Saturday, Sunday). I arrived again around noon. Ivo Karlovic & his coach got dropped off right when I did so we walked in at the same time. Since all the singles players had matches today most of them practiced earlier so mostly doubles guys were on all the courts. The exception was Robby Ginepri who always practices at the hottest time of day (1:00 p.m.). Someone who appeared to be Bobby Reynolds (the most anonymous player left in the tournament) was also practicing in the stadium. Wayne Bryan was out on the very dry clay courts running another kids clinic, this time with Travis Parrott. "Travis Parrott is a professional tennis player. He can hit the ball like you've never seen before." Mr. Bryan at one point told the kids that if Parrott couldn't hit back 50 straight returns, he [Parrott] would buy them all lunch from McDonald's. Of course, he was getting them all back and when he was in the 40s the kids started screaming "miss, miss." More impressive is Mr. Bryan's ability to toss the balls & yell into his handheld microphone at the same time.Later in the day, I watched a little of Muller v. Clement and then Andy's Roddick's practice session on one of the practice courts. Today he was on the left court which is the closest to the main entrance so there was quite a mob there. These two little boys near me weren't convinced it was really Roddick. When they finally agreed that it was, they then argued over whether or not the person he was practicing with was James Blake. (It was Dean Goldfine.) They were having a much more serious practice than any of the other ones I've watched this week. (Roddick did take time to check out the female player who came to practice on the court next to his & stopped practicing to ask the doubles guy that came off that court who she was.) When the practice was over, he totally psyched out the mob waiting for him outside the gate by pretending to retrieve a ball and instead just walking across the other two courts & out the far gate. Just a few minutes later Chela & his team walked by (presumably to use the same court).I ran into someone I knew & didn't get back to the Clement v. Muller match until it was nearly over. Muller had been up when I left, but Clement came back to win the match. Muller looked very tired all week. I went to meet my guest & we picked up dinner. We looked in on Berdych v. Grosjean. The French guys that had been supporting Clement moved over to cheer for Grosjean, but it wasn't enough.We settled into the stadium to watch the entire Roddick v. Chela match. Tonight was the fullest I've seen the stadium thus far. (Some of the Srichaphans stuck around & were supporting Roddick.) In the second game of the match, Roddick was 30-0 up in Chela's service game & suddenly stopped playing. The umpire & the crowd were confused for a while (I thought at first it had something to do with the flashes going off), but Roddick had noticed some sort of commotion in the upper deck behind the umpire. It turns out someone was having a seizure & the umpire had to alert the EMS to come & take them out. (Roddick to the rescue again!) The match was a lot more onesided than the score might suggest. Chela was playing fairly poorly & hit a lot of double faults. They had a few good rallies in the 2nd with Roddick really showing some wheels running down Chela's drop shots. Roddick only faced two break points the whole match (both in the first), but one return that was barely out in the tiebreak cost him the 2nd set. He stepped it up a notch in the third & quickly converted a break point (& had five break points to go up a double break) before finishing off the match with a spectacular drop shot. After the match Wayne Bryan got on court again to run another game with Andy for Nautica. It was the return Andy's serve contest I've seen them do before in Washington with the exact same sequence of events: Roddick bombs in the first two serves (garnering gasps from the crowd) & then throws in a 75 mph the contestant can easily get back. When the female contestant has a turn, Mr. Bryan says if she can get it back she wins a date with Roddick so he serves the next serve underhanded.By this time, the Ginepri v. Horna match was over. A guy who watched it told me that Ginepri seemed to be playing better as the match went on & came back from 2-6 down in the tiebreak only to lose it 8-10. He seems to be a player that gains an advantage by playing at the hottest time of the day so 7:00 p.m. may have taken away his edge. We watched the first set of the Knowles/Stepanek & Karlovic/Hernych doubles match in the grandstand (& could look over into the other doubles match with Black/Ullyett & Kerr/Oliver). Then it was back to the stadium where James Blake was already up a set on Tomas Zib. It was a fairly short & unremarkable match. More than half the stadium had cleared out, but there were some particularly fervent Blake fans in one section that kept everyone from falling asleep. Blake looked pretty pumped when he broke in the second.We checked back in on the Knowles/Stepanek & Karlovic/Hernych match to find them now in a third set. It didn't take us long to figure out that the people in front of us were the family of Knowles (parents, wife/girlfriend, & three other friends). They cheered loudly the entire match (particularly Knowles's father). We watched a little of the last doubles match (Bhupathi/Damm v. Beck/Berdych) before heading home for the day.
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