US Open!

I attended my first ever Grand Slam this past weekend, and it was definitely really exciting. I had tickets to see the night session in Arthur Ashe this past Saturday, and I was excited to have Federer's match against Mannarino. However, I was not excited to see Wozniacki vs. Giorgi, because Wozniacki is not really a top-tier player.

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I had a really nice seat in the loge level, which is the second level right above the luxury boxes (and almost directly above one of those long screens), which I purchased through the ticket exchange from a subscriber (and given how much an individual session costs per ticket, I couldn't imagine ponying up the money for an entire loge box-6 seats-would cost for the entire tournament).

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The first thing I noticed was how little pace Wozniacki put on the ball. I knew that it was pretty slow, but nothing really prepared me to see how slow it really was when watching her live, and it was seriously boring me. In fact, after a set or so, the other patrons in the box left for the rest of the night. Giorgi, on the other hand, was putting a lot of pace on the ball, and forcing Wozniacki to play almost too defensive, resulting in lots of uninteresting and uninspired tennis.

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By the third set I could really feel that the crowd wanted Giorgi to win because she was providing all the excitement and we could get to the Federer match sooner, and I was so glad when she beat Wozniacki.

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Federer destroys Mannarino in typical Federer fashion and shows glimpses of his former self. The crowd goes wild. The crowd cheering right before serves is infinitely more annoying live, and everyone had to stop on the stairwell out of the stadium because they could see Federer do his post-match TV interview from the stairs. Of course, this was before he played Robredo the next round...