Tennis and My Camera: Queens Tennis Day 4

Hello,

Was back again for my final visit to Queens 2013 yesterday. I hope you enjoy my final day in pictures. Since Queens has well and truly priced most normal people out of tickets (yes I'm still bitter about the second court costing extra at a 250!) I settled on a Grounds Pass again today, which mostly gave me more of a chance to check out the Doubles tournament, which I always love to watch but so seldom see on TV.

However I did start out the day watching a very nice quality Singles match between 2 former champions, 4 times champion Lleyton Hewitt and the 2010 champion Sam Querrey. What was quite interesting about this match other than the high-quality tennis was how few people would cheer or applaud when Querrey would bomb down an ace or hit some blistering FH winners. In contrast, Hewitt would get encouragement on every point he won, no matter how it was won. I guess Querrey really is that hard to root for because I found myself rooting for Hewitt too even though I am not much of a personal fan of his tennis style. It makes him difficult from a photography point of view too because he really shows a lack of emotion or anything on court. Anyway a very happy and emotional Hewitt went on to win in 3 sets to reach his first QF of the year. Both Hewitt and Denis Kudla (who I saw win comfortably afterwards) are really making a nice story at this tournament so far, amongst the otherwise mainly predictable Singles results.

Awaiting Hewitt and Querrey on Court 2...you can see the weather is um, improving...

Hewitt d. Querrey

To the Practise courts...here I watched the Bryan Brothers for a while and also Ivan Dodig again...

Back over to watch some Doubles...here is Troicki/Zemlja defeating Marach/Rosol. Some solid stuff from the Serb/Slovak pair with some entertaining points, actually especially at net. I had originally expected their opponents to edge this but they were worthy of their win. Of course later in the day, experienced Doubles players Zimonjic and Benneteau were too strong for them.

A rare and shocking sun moment deserves a picture (typical British me). Of course today's (Friday) weather is totally sunny...

Anyway, back to the match in sun

No wait, it's gone again. Just to demonstrate how windy Queens was Thursday, especially in the evening. Couldn't possibly get a decent flags picture.

Garcia-Lopez/J.P Smith defeating Malisse/Ram...slice and backhand tastic.

What I particularly like about Court 9 is the great view over the other sometimes match and most often practise courts. Here I am nosing on Benoit Paire from 3 courts away and also Julien Benneteau/Nenad Zimonjic prepping for doubles. On Tuesday I got to watch 3 matches at once from this position. Fun stuff, at least it fills in change of ends well.

Moving over to Court 2, I watched the second set of Benneteau/Zimonjic defeating Troicki/Zemlja.

Then I got to watch the very enjoyable Doubles pairing of Roger-Vasselin/Paire defeating the Dutch duo of Sijsling/De Bakker. Unfortunately their next round was moved to Court 1 in the late evening against the British pair Marray/Fleming, which they lost in a match tiebreak. Roger-Vasselin really played a lot of Tennis today though so I was pleased they made it that competitive (but not pleased at I couldn't watch it). Oh well, it was cold and windy and warm food/place were calling so I ended my day.

Roger Vasselin/Paire defeating Sijsling/De Bakker