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| Behind the scenes with Bob and Mike... |
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| July 24th, 2008 Hey everyone- so there's a lot that's happened since Bob's last blog. Sorry for the delay....here we go...... While Bob was busy winning the French Open mixed title, I took off to London early to relax, get a jump on the grass court practice, and finally start eating some good food.( As you all probably know by now, I have some food allergies and it's really easy to find my gluten free goodies in London.) Anyway, our coach David Macpherson took off from Paris early too.....he went home to see his family so Bob was pretty much flying solo despite having our cousin Carl there with him. Carl is no coach but he's got a great serve from the service line and is willing to take care of any miscellaneous tasks like picking up balls, grabbing rackets, calling for transportation, making take out food runs, etc.. Who would of thought that those two card playing fanatics could be professional enough to pull off a win in the French mixed. I think Macca and I had kind of written them off.....but when Bob and Carl arrived in London with the trophy, they definitely had a little spring in their step.... and I guess I needed to realize there was a new team in town! Anyway, when they both came down off their proverbial high horses, we all settled in for a fun week at Queens. During the tourney we stay at our long time friend's, the Segals, beautiful house in Chelsea. We love it there because not only is it an absolute palace, it's in one of the nicest areas of London where we can conviently walk to great restaurants, shops, and a movie theatre where we saw Mongol and Hancock. One of our favorite restaurants, which we dine at every other night, is called Aglio Olio and the fish and salads are scrumptious! We've had tons of fun the past 8 years we've stayed with the Segals. Elena Segal, a lawyer for i-tunes Europe, hooks us up with guitars, keyboards, and amps from her musical contacts, so we're all dialed in to jam. And Elena plays saxaphone beautifully, so she definitely gives our Dave Matthews Band renditions a little credibility. Unfortunately, we probably had more time than we would have liked to play music considering our early exit in the tourney. We even recorded some crazy songs that somehow made their way onto youtube! Definitely too much time on our hands! After our week in Chelsea we headed up north to play a few exhibtion matches at Stoke Park. This is definitely one of our favorite weeks of the year! Stoke Park is a picturesque resort about an hour outside of London. It's a very relaxing place to spend time practicing and getting ready for Wimbledon. We participate in the Boodles Challenge, an exhibition tournament showcasing pro tennis for the very wealthy members of this posh club/resort. During our stay at S.P., we take full advantage of the beautiful golf course, award winning spa, expansive gym and pool, and gourmet restaurants. We've begged the organizers of the tournament for accomodation the past 3 years, so we didn't have to make the drive everyday from London, and luckily this year they comped two 400 pound a night rooms for the entire week! Considering there are only about 25 rooms in the whole hotel, we felt very fortunate to have lodging. A few of the other players were very jealous. Some of the other guys playing up there were Bagditis, Djokovic, and Nalbandian. And when we checked in, we were blown away when they didn't ask for our credit card for incedentals. Everything was comped!!!!! We were spoiled rotten and we even had a Wii in our rooms..... guitar hero has become my new addiction. This blog is getting a little long so I'm going to fast-forward to the highlight of Wimbledon: the mixed doubles final. We were originally scheduled to play right after the Nadal-Federer match on Center Court. But the weather gods weren't cooperating so we were playing the waiting game. We spent most of the day hanging out in the computer lounge playing scrabulous(an online version of scrabble on facebook) or down in the empty gentlemen's seeded dressing room watching the match. Bob, Carl, and I were pretty much glued to the TV screen in awe of the brilliance from two great champions. We are a little biased and have to say we were pulling for Roger to come away with his 6th consecutive title. Since the locker room was a ghost town, we were able to root a little and not offend any Spaniards! Unfortunately, we weren't able to catch the end of the epic battle because the tournament decided to put us on court 1 in an attempt to finish our match before darkness set in. One more rain delay pushed our starting time back to around 8:45. Since the last ball at Wimbledon is never hit beyond 9:30 on a clear day, we were figuring that since the sky was overcast, our new deadline was 9:15 tops. Before we headed out to play, the tournament supervisor asked us if we wanted to hold off playing the match until tomorrow because it was obvious we weren't going to finish. But he also advised us the forecast didn't look great for the next day either......so potentially we could be stuck in London a few more days. Sam, Bob, Katarina, and I were all in the Court 1 holding room hanging out together when he came in. We all had already booked flights for the next morning jetting us back home for weeks off we all needed, and the last thing we collectively wanted to do was spend another day in London. Nothing against London-it's one of my favorite cities but California was calling my name and it was finally time to slip out of tennis mode after 11 weeks in Europe. So after the supervisor left, we all weighed our options and then decided to get onto the court and get in as much as possible. Bob and Sam were on a mission from the very start. Bob was serving enormous and Sam returned Katarina's serve extremely well. After about a half hour of play, Katarina and I found ourselves down a set and an early break with very minimal light remaining. I can't lie, I can't say I was in the zone because I was definitely sneaking peaks at the Roger, Rafa score. It was hard not to with a packed "Henman Hill", right outside court 1, erupting after every point. I personally couldn't believe that they had finished under the very poor visibility! At about 9:15 we heard the final sustained roar from the fans which signaled the end of their match. I was definitely disappointed to see the "great one," who had valiantly fought back, finally bowed out. That was the least of my problems- I was down a set and a break to my twin brother in the Wimbledon final, I couldn't even see the ball because we were playing a new sport called "night tennis", and the supervisor was telling us we probably should come off the court and finish the next day where it was a good possibility it was going to be a wash-out! After a long discussion at net, we all decided to play one more service game each and then see where that put us. My situation looked bleak considering we were down a set and a break against two huge servers, so the last thing I wanted to do was stay a whole extra day for a couple games and then watch Bob crush four aces by us to serve out the match. We decided to fight on and push our eyesight to the limit and attempt to somehow break back into the match. I know it seemed a little absurd but we felt like we were making history for playing the darkest match of all-time and it was kind of fun- it felt like we were at a Mexican birthday party....you know-that pinada game! Ha! Anyway, we finished the match at 9:30ish.....and for the last 15 minuted we played 7 games without sitting down for change-overs. Bob and Sam can thank Katarina and I for being kind enough to keep playing. And how did Bob thank us- when he walked out to receive the winners trophy, he rubbed it in by putting his left arm in the air and flexing his bicep! Cocky guy! But karma returned the favor because when he raised the trophy up in the air, the top came off and hit him right on the head! It was a classic moment and wish someone can send me the tape of it! Bob and I headed back to a weird scene in the locker room. In one corner, there was Rafa and about 20 of his entourage popping champagne and laughing and in the other corner, Roger was dejected and sitting quietly alone. Roger proved what a great person he is when after solemnly walking out of the drug testing room, he gave me a quick smile and said, "see you in Toronto." I knew how much pain he was in and for him to still be courteous was awesome to see. What a great guy! So I headed back to California for an unbelievable week at home.....which included a lot of laying by the pool, long jam sessions, a Coldplay concert, and no tennis or working out! After 7 refreshing days of sleeping in my own bed it was time to hit the road again for a week of WTT where we played for Kansas City. I'm going to pass the baton to Bob now and he can blog about our fun week with the Explorers. Thanks for reading! Hope you're all having a great summer! All the best- Mike |
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