I’ve very rarely been a spectator of live sport. I’ve only been to two Woking football games in 1998 – one where they played superbly and one where they played not so superbly – and the final day of the England-West Indies test match at Lord’s in 2004 (that’s the one where Freddie Flintoff told Timo Best to aim for the windows of the pavillion…Best promptly got himself out). So an afternoon in West London to watch some top quality professional tennis at semi-finals day at Queen’s Club was a very exciting prospect.
The first semi-final we saw was between Germany’s Rainer Schuettler and the USA’s Sam Querry. It wasn’t a golden match. There were no spectacular shots nor were there any amazing rallies but the workmanlike method of both players was captivating to watch. Initially, Querry’s lack of good judgement and Schuettler’s experience counted towards the German being one set up and as it reached 5-5 in the second set it was widely expected that he’d win. The pendulum swung in the opposite direction. Querry broke serve to give him the second set before doing so again in the deciding set to win 6-7, 7-5, 6-3. The American is very much a player in the Andy Roddick mould but, sadly, not as good as Roddick.
The second semi-final was a much more swift affair. American Mardy Fish, who was the conqueror of Andy Murray, comfortably disposed of Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in an hour and two minutes – nearly half the time it took in the game that preceded it. It seemed like Fish was ready for almost anything Lopez threw at him: every serve was met by a ferocious return shot and he rarely put a foot wrong. It was to my great surprise when I discovered on Sunday night that he lost to Querry in the final because out of the two the Florida-based player was a far more impressive all-round player. Maybe he just ran out of steam when it really mattered.
The day out was very enjoyable though once you get past how staggeringly expensive food and drink is for punters. If they want to get more people watching live tennis then £9 for an open club sandwich and £3.30 for a a can of Diet Coke is overly excessive. Silly trivial grumbles aside, this was about as much tennis as I’ll see over the summer with work and Glastonbury getting in the way of the first week at Wimbledon.
