Summer of tennis/tannist

It’s January and of course it’s tennis time. First with the Hopman Cup on day & night way over in Perth (& on TV on Aunty), followed by what has become out annual pilgrimage to the Sydney Olympic Park – the former adidas International – Medibank International. I cannot remember for how years straight I’ve been going to the tournament in a row, but definitely for at least the last 3 years, possibly 5. The attending field differs from year to year, of course, but this year the women’s field is particularly strong. Prior to the withdrawal of the current world no. 1 (Justine Henin-Hardenne), 18 of the world’s top 20 were scheduled to play here, including 9 of the world’s top 10 (barring the grunt-maestress, the 1 Maria Sharapova). We usually buy the Australian Tennis Magazine which used to have a free ground pass included in its January edition. But this year, that very promotion no longer exists, so we had to shell out $$s to buy actual tickets. Luckily, Medibank is running a BOGOF promotion (for non-Aussies, BOGOF is of course Buy One Get One Free), so we bought 2 centre court tickets, & seeing that I still have student concession until end of March, a concession ground pass. Like usual, lots of running around scouting out the hard workers who come out to practice on the various courts, as well as occasionally (stress ‘occasionally’) sitting down to watch smidges of matches while either (1) when feeling hungry, or (2) when feeling tired. Autograph hunting was much more fruitful (ha, fruitful ^_^) than last year’s Aus Open where I only got 1 (yes, 1) autograph, that of the sour-grape Davydenko (see here for reasons of sour-grape status). Amongst my victims included soon-to-be retiree Kim Clijsters, defending Aus Open champ Amelie Mauresmo, Nadia Petrova, and on the men’s side the very hilarious Dmitry ‘Dima’ Tursunov, the smiling assasin Marcos Baghdatis … All that running about also doubled as a good tanning session, which hopefully I can keep up for a little while. Maybe I should stay outdoors a bit more, but it's so hot …