Ballbuster's River Oaks report

[:rolleyes:]

I went to the River Oaks exhibition tournament on Wednesday for the afternoon matches, Thomas Enqvist vs Michael Russell, and Pdorn vs. Hugo Armando.

Tickets were only 25$ but this country club was super swanky. My mom and I were the only non-whites there not in uniform.

Stadium was small, maybe 3000 capacity, and there was maybe 400 people in it at the time. Most seats were in the shade. The surface was a real dark red clay.

Mostly rich people who didn't care about tennis and just chatted. These were the hotshot businessmen that were still wearing there ties and Oakley sunglasses and had there stuck up wives wearing big hates and high heels.

Nobody really payed attention so there wasn't much cheering except for a few big Russell fans. You might remember him from the 2001 RG where he reached the fourth round and had a fourth set against Guga.

Russell won his match in straights, 6-1 6-4. I was really disappointed in Enqvist's play, although he did have a mini-comeback in the second set, a little too late.

I stayed for the first set of the Armando-Pdorn match. Armando won in a tiebreak. The level of play in this match was higher; they had much faster serves than first two. Armando had a little bit of an attitude and he was questioning calls and yelling at himself.

Here are some pics from my journey:
www.supload.com/012005/P4060075.JPG
www.supload.com/012005/P4060070.JPG
www.supload.com/012005/P4060071.JPG
www.supload.com/012005/P4060081.JPG
www.supload.com/012005/P4060078.JPG

[:rolleyes:]

oh well apparently I can't hotlink to that site.

son of a bitch.

[:rolleyes:]

copy and paste the URL into your bar and then you can see the pics.

[The Chloe]

If you want to email me the pics I can host them on photobucket for you.

I don't have time to read this right now, but i look forward to it after work tomorrow.

Thanks

[The Chloe]

I' moving this to tournament tales so that it's with the other reports.

Thanks again

[Francine]

Thanks Ballbuster Ahh, Tompa. He's never been a big force on clay but surely he would have won this match a couple of years ago, or made it close at least. Wasn't Michael Russel that guy that pushed Gustavo Kuerten to five sets at RG '01?

[The Chloe]

Yes.

[freudo]

thanks bbuster, i love live reports, will try the pics, too

[Patrik Sjöberg]

Thanks for the reports ballbuster and the club is a bit white bread is it?

[:rolleyes:]

yes

[Ilhame]

Thanks for the report!

[molala]

sorry for the late reply (i only found this part of the forums), thanks for the pics and report! brings back memories of my visits to River Oaks when I lived in Houston. And seeing pics of yummy Tompa is always great .