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US Open 2011 - Wednesday, Part 1
Sep. 1st, 2011 11:58 pmYesterday Katie and I went to the US Open! IT WAS AWESOME. We saw at least a game or two of 18 matches, I think, and did drive-by hellos of 2 or 3 more. XD We went with quantity over quality - there were only about 5-6 matches that we saw close to a full set, and the rest we popped in for a couple games and soaked in a lot of doubles action and then ran.
Katie brought a telephoto lens and took absolutely gorgeous pictures - so, in pictures, here is Laura and Katie's Big Day at the US Open. :D I'm splitting it into 2 entries because there are so many pictures!
It started, like all good things, with Feli.
Gratuitous Feli-butt!!
We raced right over to Feli's match and heavens was it worth it! His shirt is gorgeous and his skin was glowing. He was focused and playing well. Of course we got "I'm not on TV" half-assed hair but WHATEVER. He was very well behaved - I really liked his attitude, being very careful and taking an effort to hit the ball to the ball kids and not just kind of whacking it out of the way, and he even - gasp! - put his towel back himself once instead of just chucking it at the kid! I really like that sort of thing. And he was playing solidly - not killing his opponent, but not giving us too much stress either. Good boy, Feli. :3
We were briefly sitting next to Feli Lady, a super-intense fan who we love. Overall, everyone we ended up sitting near and eavesdropping on were hilarious, it really enhanced our experience. I'll copy Feli Lady from a comment in ontd_tennis. Feli Lady was just such an unabashed fangirl - but fanwoman, cos she was over 35, I'd say. She only sat next to us briefly because as soon as a seat opened up in the front row she was THERE. And she was all shouting "GO FELICIANO" and her friend was talking to these random dudes behind them and was like "oh yeah, she loves Feliciano" and she was just so hyped, it was awesome. She was blonde and pretty enough but like I said, not super-young. We saw her again later, I think. XD [Watch her totally read this and it be super awkward. This is always my life. Hi Feli Lady! Sorry for creeping on you.]
Then we saw Oli Rochus play doubles and it was as magical as you might imagine. Especially when his partner, Andre Sa, is 6'1". (Oli is the shortest man on tour at 5'5". We call him Little Boss and think he's fantastic.) Oli lost his opening round on Tuesday so I felt SO lucky that we were able to see him in the doubles!
Beasting.
They were down a set when we came over but won the second set! And we got to see an Oli Rochus ace!!
Then... this happened:
This was on a tiny little side court and we were sitting in the front row of the little bleachers, so we're basically on the court, and Katie has a big camera with a big telephoto lens - not enormous but normal big - and Oli Looked Right At Her. Hahahahahaa I cannot believe the face he's making! Katie was SO EMBARRASSED! She buried her head in my shoulder which just made the whole situation more weird. This is the last pic Katie took of Oli, she could not bring herself to lift her camera after that.
Unfortunately they lost the match, but we were so happy to have seen him!
Then we walked around a lot and stopped by a couple other random matches, just to check people out quickly.
We saw Kiri, dominating and accelerating:
and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who was embroiled in what would become a 5-setter (THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER):
He's quite cute in person! As is Maria Kirilenko but that goes without saying rather.
Janko was practicing on a random court, i think it was 5 - there were two courts that just had practicing but all the big names stayed on the protected, designated practice courts where you can only see a little bit. Anyway Janko is an ass but he's a very very hot ass so we stopped to ogle for a little.
Then to the practice courts themselves!! Haha at first we were like "uhhh I dont' recognize anyone" and I still can't quite place the dude on the near court... then we realized that Petko was right behind him, and behind her was Sam Stosur hitting with Venus Williams (who was wearing a Sloane Stephens costume and totally fooled us! Bun, visor, turquoise top! She was too far away for us to really see. Anyway it's weird that we actually saw Venus at the US Open...).
Behind them was. . . David Ferrer hitting with Juan Carlos Ferrero!! Two of my favorite players - Ferru possibly my favorite - and one of my favorite friendships on tour. :333 We totally wouldn't have recognized them if someone behind us hadn't ID'ed them but after he said that you could totally tell even from a distance. Ferru was bouncing all over the place. :DDD Juanqui hit him some lobs so he could practice his overhead and then he was helping Juanqui practice his volleying. So adorable.
We only have pictures of Petko, really, because she was the closest and Katie wasn't confident about the fence. They turned out great, though, so if we see more epic people far away on Saturday we're going to get more.
She looked AMAZING. Oh my god. *______* Just hitting with her coach (who Katie actually recognized first from twitter) - quite serious and focused, doing pretty well from what I saw.
MUSCLESSSSSS.
God, and she was glistening and just so, so lovely.
A big one since there's so much background action. We were like "oh! haha! you can totally see Sam and Juanqui!" If we'd known we would have creeped on them photographically but it was good anyway!
No Venus but you can see the action on her side of the court.
haha ok. I couldn't restrain myself from posting all the Petko pics. No regrets!!
Then - Pico time!! So lucky that he was playing dubs, we could see him all close up. So adorable!! AHHH SO CUTE.
It's so obvious that he has a great disposition. And great hair. Even though he's not smiling in these pics, he was just peppy and up all the time. :)
Oh, and he was playing Andy and Joni! Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich, doubles specialists from Israel! So the bleachers were half full of cheering Argentines and half full of cheering Jews, it was super fun. I like Joni and Andy too so I was happy to see them as well.
After Pico, I think we had lunch and a little chill time? It might have been before... or later. Anyway, it was good to sit in the shade and drink lots of water. Then, it was back to see Feli finish things up. :DD We had better seats this time and it was very very satisfying.
nomnomnom. Of course his hair was even worse at this point but his eyelashes were more than making up for it.
Onward! To see Jamie Murray (and...Santiago Gonzalez) face doubles team/bffs extraordinaire, Melpet! aka Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner.
Poor Jamie. ::sigh::
However, Melpet were BEYOND adorable!!
So cute, so bro-tastic, so clearly enjoying themselves. And of course, they dominated. . .
Then we decided to check out Julia Goerges because it was pretty quiet and we totally thought we had time to see Delpo still. And Julia is cute and she was playing on the new court 17 and the seats had backs!
Julia was nice enough to breadstick her opponent, and up next was Ivo Karlovic and partner (Frank Moser) playing the Bryan Brothers. We both wanted to see that in person so we stuck around but they took FOREVER coming out. XPPP
Still... worth it just to see Ivo duck to get out the door.
hahaha so satisfying.
Also worth it to get this picture. XDD
However, while they were still just warming up we noticed that Delpo was leading 4-1 in the third set. . . AAAAGH!! So we ran the hell over to Louis Armstrong but he's too friggin fast! There was just a point left when we got there. So we didn't get to soak up the amazing forehand in person. :( But we did get to soak up the adorable Delpitude in person!!
I. . . don't even remember what he said but it was adorable. I was cooing so hard. And he thanked the Argie fans in Spanish. :3
hahaha cos all the balls he hit to fans went friggin twice as high as the stadium before coming down.
:33333333 <--basically Delpo's cuteness reduces me to just :3333
Anyway, Sam was on Louis Armstrong next! So we moved close and settled in to ogle her biceps for a set or so.
So cute!!
Luckily she brought the arm-porn because the tennis wasn't that great.
Not that I can stay mad at her! But we didn't even stay the whole set, I think. Haha there was a guy yelling "Go Coco!!" cos she was playing American Coco Vandeweghe (I cannot even with that name) and it was just hilarious. But there was also good support for Sammy. :)))
I can't remember exactly when but at some point after this - kind of scattered throughout the afternoon - we did some undocumented doubles drive-bys. I had to see Fabio Fognini because he is a hilarious troll. We came, we saw, we cracked up, we walked away. Actually we did note that his doubles partner, Simone Bolelli, is a very good looking man.
We also stopped by Vera and Pavyluchenkova's doubles, cos I loves Bepa and she looked adorable, and they were beasting. And we zipped past Jarka and Bethanie Mattek-Sands's doubles to see Bethanie's knee socks and just general self. We also peeped in on Jarka's mixed dubs. She replaced beautiful Bellucci with alternate Brazilian Bruno Soares. MUCH LESS ATTRACTIVE but they seemed to be having fun.
Oh and we said hi to Lipsky and Ram because at our first US Open we watched them play Tommy and Marcel and there were these dudes shouting "Come on Raj!!" and we got all invested. There were dudes shouting "Come on Raj!!" yesterday today but they still lost. ;__; But at least we said hey. And I said hey to Rennae Stubbs's doubles match because she is an epic legend and I wanted to see her and it was awesome. Even though she lost too. :((( But she looked epic and hardcore doing so, and one woman shouted "Good hustle, Rennae!!" and it was.
AND we watched a bit of Butorac and Rojer. XDD We adopted them as our random American doubles team possibly even more so than Lipsky and Ram even though Jean-Julien Rojer is from Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles. But Katie watched a match of theirs with a total bro commentator and yeah, we're invested. There are actual pictures of them cos we settled in for a bit but I think they didn't get uploaded. . . whoops! They were playing Dima Tursunov and Grigor Dimitrov and once again their doubles lovin' was too much for their opponents.
I also can't remember when this happened, but at one match we saw a couple, a man and a woman, wearing exact matching outfits. Oh my god. It was like. . . if we were in the WASP Alps generally, they were WASP Mount Everest. If Mount Everest were in the Alps. They were both wearing khaki shorts and lime green polo shirts. I begged Katie to take a picture but she wouldn't. ;___;
And now that I've broken the chronological flow, this is as good a place as any to switch entries! Part 2!
Katie brought a telephoto lens and took absolutely gorgeous pictures - so, in pictures, here is Laura and Katie's Big Day at the US Open. :D I'm splitting it into 2 entries because there are so many pictures!
It started, like all good things, with Feli.
Gratuitous Feli-butt!!
We raced right over to Feli's match and heavens was it worth it! His shirt is gorgeous and his skin was glowing. He was focused and playing well. Of course we got "I'm not on TV" half-assed hair but WHATEVER. He was very well behaved - I really liked his attitude, being very careful and taking an effort to hit the ball to the ball kids and not just kind of whacking it out of the way, and he even - gasp! - put his towel back himself once instead of just chucking it at the kid! I really like that sort of thing. And he was playing solidly - not killing his opponent, but not giving us too much stress either. Good boy, Feli. :3
We were briefly sitting next to Feli Lady, a super-intense fan who we love. Overall, everyone we ended up sitting near and eavesdropping on were hilarious, it really enhanced our experience. I'll copy Feli Lady from a comment in ontd_tennis. Feli Lady was just such an unabashed fangirl - but fanwoman, cos she was over 35, I'd say. She only sat next to us briefly because as soon as a seat opened up in the front row she was THERE. And she was all shouting "GO FELICIANO" and her friend was talking to these random dudes behind them and was like "oh yeah, she loves Feliciano" and she was just so hyped, it was awesome. She was blonde and pretty enough but like I said, not super-young. We saw her again later, I think. XD [Watch her totally read this and it be super awkward. This is always my life. Hi Feli Lady! Sorry for creeping on you.]
Then we saw Oli Rochus play doubles and it was as magical as you might imagine. Especially when his partner, Andre Sa, is 6'1". (Oli is the shortest man on tour at 5'5". We call him Little Boss and think he's fantastic.) Oli lost his opening round on Tuesday so I felt SO lucky that we were able to see him in the doubles!
Beasting.
They were down a set when we came over but won the second set! And we got to see an Oli Rochus ace!!
Then... this happened:
This was on a tiny little side court and we were sitting in the front row of the little bleachers, so we're basically on the court, and Katie has a big camera with a big telephoto lens - not enormous but normal big - and Oli Looked Right At Her. Hahahahahaa I cannot believe the face he's making! Katie was SO EMBARRASSED! She buried her head in my shoulder which just made the whole situation more weird. This is the last pic Katie took of Oli, she could not bring herself to lift her camera after that.
Unfortunately they lost the match, but we were so happy to have seen him!
Then we walked around a lot and stopped by a couple other random matches, just to check people out quickly.
We saw Kiri, dominating and accelerating:
and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who was embroiled in what would become a 5-setter (THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER):
He's quite cute in person! As is Maria Kirilenko but that goes without saying rather.
Janko was practicing on a random court, i think it was 5 - there were two courts that just had practicing but all the big names stayed on the protected, designated practice courts where you can only see a little bit. Anyway Janko is an ass but he's a very very hot ass so we stopped to ogle for a little.
Then to the practice courts themselves!! Haha at first we were like "uhhh I dont' recognize anyone" and I still can't quite place the dude on the near court... then we realized that Petko was right behind him, and behind her was Sam Stosur hitting with Venus Williams (who was wearing a Sloane Stephens costume and totally fooled us! Bun, visor, turquoise top! She was too far away for us to really see. Anyway it's weird that we actually saw Venus at the US Open...).
Behind them was. . . David Ferrer hitting with Juan Carlos Ferrero!! Two of my favorite players - Ferru possibly my favorite - and one of my favorite friendships on tour. :333 We totally wouldn't have recognized them if someone behind us hadn't ID'ed them but after he said that you could totally tell even from a distance. Ferru was bouncing all over the place. :DDD Juanqui hit him some lobs so he could practice his overhead and then he was helping Juanqui practice his volleying. So adorable.
We only have pictures of Petko, really, because she was the closest and Katie wasn't confident about the fence. They turned out great, though, so if we see more epic people far away on Saturday we're going to get more.
She looked AMAZING. Oh my god. *______* Just hitting with her coach (who Katie actually recognized first from twitter) - quite serious and focused, doing pretty well from what I saw.
MUSCLESSSSSS.
God, and she was glistening and just so, so lovely.
A big one since there's so much background action. We were like "oh! haha! you can totally see Sam and Juanqui!" If we'd known we would have creeped on them photographically but it was good anyway!
No Venus but you can see the action on her side of the court.
haha ok. I couldn't restrain myself from posting all the Petko pics. No regrets!!
Then - Pico time!! So lucky that he was playing dubs, we could see him all close up. So adorable!! AHHH SO CUTE.
It's so obvious that he has a great disposition. And great hair. Even though he's not smiling in these pics, he was just peppy and up all the time. :)
Oh, and he was playing Andy and Joni! Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich, doubles specialists from Israel! So the bleachers were half full of cheering Argentines and half full of cheering Jews, it was super fun. I like Joni and Andy too so I was happy to see them as well.
After Pico, I think we had lunch and a little chill time? It might have been before... or later. Anyway, it was good to sit in the shade and drink lots of water. Then, it was back to see Feli finish things up. :DD We had better seats this time and it was very very satisfying.
nomnomnom. Of course his hair was even worse at this point but his eyelashes were more than making up for it.
Onward! To see Jamie Murray (and...Santiago Gonzalez) face doubles team/bffs extraordinaire, Melpet! aka Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner.
Poor Jamie. ::sigh::
However, Melpet were BEYOND adorable!!
So cute, so bro-tastic, so clearly enjoying themselves. And of course, they dominated. . .
Then we decided to check out Julia Goerges because it was pretty quiet and we totally thought we had time to see Delpo still. And Julia is cute and she was playing on the new court 17 and the seats had backs!
Julia was nice enough to breadstick her opponent, and up next was Ivo Karlovic and partner (Frank Moser) playing the Bryan Brothers. We both wanted to see that in person so we stuck around but they took FOREVER coming out. XPPP
Still... worth it just to see Ivo duck to get out the door.
hahaha so satisfying.
Also worth it to get this picture. XDD
However, while they were still just warming up we noticed that Delpo was leading 4-1 in the third set. . . AAAAGH!! So we ran the hell over to Louis Armstrong but he's too friggin fast! There was just a point left when we got there. So we didn't get to soak up the amazing forehand in person. :( But we did get to soak up the adorable Delpitude in person!!
I. . . don't even remember what he said but it was adorable. I was cooing so hard. And he thanked the Argie fans in Spanish. :3
hahaha cos all the balls he hit to fans went friggin twice as high as the stadium before coming down.
:33333333 <--basically Delpo's cuteness reduces me to just :3333
Anyway, Sam was on Louis Armstrong next! So we moved close and settled in to ogle her biceps for a set or so.
So cute!!
Luckily she brought the arm-porn because the tennis wasn't that great.
Not that I can stay mad at her! But we didn't even stay the whole set, I think. Haha there was a guy yelling "Go Coco!!" cos she was playing American Coco Vandeweghe (I cannot even with that name) and it was just hilarious. But there was also good support for Sammy. :)))
I can't remember exactly when but at some point after this - kind of scattered throughout the afternoon - we did some undocumented doubles drive-bys. I had to see Fabio Fognini because he is a hilarious troll. We came, we saw, we cracked up, we walked away. Actually we did note that his doubles partner, Simone Bolelli, is a very good looking man.
We also stopped by Vera and Pavyluchenkova's doubles, cos I loves Bepa and she looked adorable, and they were beasting. And we zipped past Jarka and Bethanie Mattek-Sands's doubles to see Bethanie's knee socks and just general self. We also peeped in on Jarka's mixed dubs. She replaced beautiful Bellucci with alternate Brazilian Bruno Soares. MUCH LESS ATTRACTIVE but they seemed to be having fun.
Oh and we said hi to Lipsky and Ram because at our first US Open we watched them play Tommy and Marcel and there were these dudes shouting "Come on Raj!!" and we got all invested. There were dudes shouting "Come on Raj!!" yesterday today but they still lost. ;__; But at least we said hey. And I said hey to Rennae Stubbs's doubles match because she is an epic legend and I wanted to see her and it was awesome. Even though she lost too. :((( But she looked epic and hardcore doing so, and one woman shouted "Good hustle, Rennae!!" and it was.
AND we watched a bit of Butorac and Rojer. XDD We adopted them as our random American doubles team possibly even more so than Lipsky and Ram even though Jean-Julien Rojer is from Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles. But Katie watched a match of theirs with a total bro commentator and yeah, we're invested. There are actual pictures of them cos we settled in for a bit but I think they didn't get uploaded. . . whoops! They were playing Dima Tursunov and Grigor Dimitrov and once again their doubles lovin' was too much for their opponents.
I also can't remember when this happened, but at one match we saw a couple, a man and a woman, wearing exact matching outfits. Oh my god. It was like. . . if we were in the WASP Alps generally, they were WASP Mount Everest. If Mount Everest were in the Alps. They were both wearing khaki shorts and lime green polo shirts. I begged Katie to take a picture but she wouldn't. ;___;
And now that I've broken the chronological flow, this is as good a place as any to switch entries! Part 2!
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 04:15 am (UTC)BTW this 36-year old is still totally a fangirl, thank you very much! ;)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 04:18 am (UTC)Hahaha I'm just very into saying woman or lady instead of girl for adults - although of course fangirl and fanboy are their own separate thing. She was an excellent fangirl!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 01:09 pm (UTC)I'm imagining someone saying "Umm... does Feli know we're filming? Should we tell him to pull up the towel? Or at least his panties?" and everyone else on set going "DON'T RUIN THIS FOR US. DON'T RUIN THIS FOR THE WORLD."
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 11:47 am (UTC)2.) LOL FOREVER at you attracting the people you write about. XD XD XD (Speaking of which : Did you delete the entry about sledge hockey? I recently looked for it, but couldn't find it anymore.)
3.) I never knew that tennis had several games going on at the same time even at major competitions! Did it feel weird to be somewhere that you normally only ever see on TV?
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 12:50 pm (UTC)It was exhausting, though! Even without anything happening! I think the stress of the whole thing.
2) Hahahaaa oh god I'm still so embarrassed about that! And more embarrassed that I never responded to her nice comment but I COULDN'T. It's. . . it's still here: http://guingel.livejournal.com/330288.html
3) Yup! There's like... 128 players entered (each, in the men's and women's competition, plus men's, women's and mixed doubles) so at the start of the tournament there's action on about 15 courts. But each major tournament has 3-4 "stadium courts" so by the end of the event pretty much all the matches are happening on those.
You know, I went to the US Open last year when I'd only been a tennis fan for two and a half months, so I probably saw it physically before I ever saw it on TV! It was fun seeing the little camera dolly overhead though! I hope I was in some crowd shots, looking happy. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 02:24 pm (UTC)2. Between Stosur and Petkovic, those are two scary bodies. Ana in particular looks so small in comparison.
3. You got the Squirrel w/ Elena pic! Really captured the hilarity of that moment. Too bad my angle sucked when it came to taking a pic of Judy Murray - hell, I barely spotted her even when I heard where she was.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 02:35 pm (UTC)THAT VIDEO OH MY GOD. I will never be fully over just the mere fact of its existence.
2. Ana did look small! I even heard someone near me mention it (not loud enough so she could hear). But she looks healthy-skinny, hopefully? So if it works for her game then hopefully she's ok.
3. I was so happy that Katie was able to get that moment with her trying to shoo the squirrel. XD So funny! And I'm so relieved that Judy Murray wasn't sitting right the hell next to me or something!