China Open 2014

Sunday morning before the National Holiday.  Onions has to work and I'm just sitting around falling in and out of sleep, watching some Mad Men and I get a text from my friend Barbara who has a free ticket to the China Open Tennis tournament.  Let's GO!

So out around the 5th Ring Road just north of the Olympic Park is China's National Tennis Center.  Behind me is the Diamond Court.  There are many smaller courts where one could walk around, watch matches and players practice. 

Diamond Court, ready for action.

First match, two grand slam winners, Stosur and Schiavone.  The latter is a HUGE screamer and grunter, like excessively so.

Yeah, I got to see Venus Williams!

Just watching her walk around and play, she's incredibly tall and long.  She looks like she has wings for arms.  I'm kind of amazed she can get all that length coordinated.  In fact, it took her a few games to get it all working, as she fell behind 0-3 to start.

3rd match of the afternoon, Maria Sharapova!  I got to see all this for FREE!

After the session at the Diamond Court, I walked around and saw China's next new female star (Li Na has, alas, retired due to injuries), Peng Shuai.

I hung out for a few hours with my friend Lei, who's a HUGE tennis fan.

I thought it would be fun for Onions to come see some tennis so we came back the next night.

We watched Grigor Dimitrov's first round victory.