Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Ready for some tennis

Ready for some tennis Three days until the US Open officially begins! As an engineer, Ill give some numbers: 125 = number of years the US Open has been around 1,100,000 = prize money for the Mens/Womens tournament winner 4 = number of Grand Slam tournaments, the US Open is one of them (along with the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and French Open) -1998 = last time that any guy won back-to-back US Open titles (Federer won last year, hes looking to win again) Ok, thats enough pretending that I know about tennis I am predicting a Federer vs. Roddick final (would anyone like a wager?) Speaking of Andy Roddick, at the beginning of August, my roommate, Anna, came to visit me and we went to see a semifinal match of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic. We crossed our fingers that we would be able to see Andy and fortunately we did! He played Paradorn Srichaphan, a 26 year-old from Thailand. After the first set, where Andy slammed four straight aces, we got a little worried that we had wasted our money on a blow-out. But luckily Paradorn learned to read Andys serve and the game heated up. In the end, Andy won 7-6, 6-2 (and he later beat James Blake for the championship.) I must note that the action that got the most audience support was not a record breaking serve, but when Andy changed his shirt between sets. Cest la vie. Im including some pictures; some of them were taken at the end of the game as the players were exiting the courts. Unfortunately, we didnt get any signatures, but we were happy just to hear them and see them up close. By the way, if youre interested in playing tennis at MIT, you have plenty of opportunities. Theres a tennis gym class (all levels), mens and womens varsity teams, as well as plenty of intramural teams.