The French Open Begins, And Posters Spring Up In Eastbourne... The Tournament Must Be Fast Approaching!

So, the 2013 French Open is now under way. The match of the first day in the men's event has to be home hope Gilles Simon's five-set win over Australian former world no. 1 Lleyton Hewitt. The Frenchman led 5-0 in the final set, and withstood a fightback from the legendarily tenacious Hewitt to eventually triumph 3-6, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 7-5 - the first time in his career he's won from two sets down.
At the moment Simon is scheduled to be the top men's seed at this year's Aegon International, and he's just one of the images that have sprung up in Eastbourne in the last few days, advertising the event. The posters were up in time for yesterday's Eastbourne carnival, and include Agnieszka Radwanska, Fernando Verdasco, Heather Watson, Laura Robson and Caroline Wozniacki. The latter two, of course, are due to face off tomorrow in the first round in Paris.
For a full list of the men's and women's entrants for Eastbourne so far, go to the tournament's official website at: http://aegoninternational.co.uk, or my former stomping ground (well, I had features published there, at least!) of http://eastbournetennis.com, where I understand they exclusively revealed this year's likely entrants in early May.

Players Battle Wind, Bartoli - Paszek Epic, Roddick On Court 3, Angelique "More Wins Than Anyone Else" Kerber, Sharapova's Near-Nemesis, Champ Seppi, Nadal's Grass-Court Conqueror, Hotshot Harrison, And More!

Something of the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to the title of this post, I know. But semi-finals (and quarter-finals as it turned out) day at the Aegon International was certainly action-packed. My VisitEastbourne guest blog on Friday's action can be read by clicking on this link: http://visit-eastbourne.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/aegon-international-guest-blog-friday.html. To view all the guest blogs and entry features - from myself, Matthew Arnold, Gabriella De Feo, Jack Gracie, Tommy Curran, and Steph Temple, click on "Home" at the bottom of my Friday feature. Alternatively, you can view them all by simply clicking on this link: http://visit-eastbourne.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Hingis, Rusedski, Martinez and Philippoussis Take Centre Stage... While Qualifying Battles Continue

My guest blog, on yesterday's events at Devonshire Park, for the VisitEastbourne website, can be viewed by clicking this link:
http://visit-eastbourne.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/aegon-international-guest-blog-sunday.html

Tickets for 2012

Less than two hours on from Andy Murray's great win over Novak Djokovic in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships semi-finals, I thought I'd post a reminder about tickets for this year's Eastbourne event - where there's just a few hours left of the special purchase period, ahead of the general sale. Unfortunately, Murray and Djokovic - and also Federer and Nadal - seem unlikely to participate in this year's Eastbourne event. As a Premier WTA tournament, but only an ATP 250 event, it attracts plenty of the top-ranked women, but far less of the top-ranked men. The only realistic chance of one of the aforementioned male players entering the tournament would be if they didn't get enough matches at the Queen's Club or Halle events the week before. Last year, however, the Eastbourne men's field did include Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Lleyton Hewitt and finalist Janko Tipsarevic, on his way to the world's top ten.

So, the tickets for the 2012 event, taking place from Saturday 16th - Saturday 23rd June: this year the LTA have appointed The Ticket Factory(TTF) to handle the sales and distribution (it was SeeTickets for the previous two years). Weekly centre court tickets are available by telephone only - not online. The UK phone number is 0844 581 1540. The special purchase period, allowing 2011 customers to book the same seat as last year (at 2012 prices), will close in a few hours - midnight UK time. After that, weekly tickets will still be available but, we're told, there are no guarantees the same seat will be available throughout the whole week.

The General Sale of tickets will not begin until 10am on Saturday 10th March. The Ticket Factory's box office phone number is 0844 581 3015, and the website is http://www.theticketfactory.com/.

Before then, this weekend sees the only opportunity to buy tickets in person at the Eastbourne box office, before the week of the tournament. The box office is at the International Tennis Centre, Devonshire Park, College Road, Eastbourne, BN21 4JJ, and will be open 9am - 5pm Saturday 3rd March and 9am - 2pm Sunday 4th March. Unlike last year, however, this box office will also be open one day before the tournament begins - Friday 15th June, 11am - 4pm.
Weekly Centre Court tickets are £200 (except for restricted views - £100 -£110). Full price centre court tickets are £27 per day, Sunday through Tuesday, then take a hike to £39 from Wednesday. The semi finals on Friday and finals on Saturday are £41 per day - with major reductions for restricted views, again. The good news for this year is that the first Saturday, 16th June, is Free access for ALL the courts. The bad news is that the seats in the North and West Stands of Court No.1 will be ticketed from Monday 18th through Friday 22nd. This means that those with only a ground pass can no longer see the big names in action on this court. Centre Court ticket holders will still have access to Court 1, but only the East Stand - more restricting.

Children are eligible for free ground passes every day, provided the "child" (aged 16 and under!) is accompanied by a paying adult, and the "child"'s ticket is requested when the accompanying adult purchases their ticket. Child ticket prices for Centre Court tickets are substantially less than adult tickets: £7 per day Sunday through Tuesday, £11 - 13 per day from Wednesday onwards. Adult ground passes are £14 per day Monday through Friday, £5 on finals day. Adult Court 1 tickets are £20 per day Monday through Thursday - again, substantially less for children. And there is a £2 reduction on ALL tickets for BTMs (British Tennis Members) and groups of 8 or more.

For more information, the somewhat complicated ticket system is presented clearly on the home page of http://www.eastbournetennis.com/, and there are also full details on the tournament's official website, http://www.aegoninternational.co.uk/.

2012 looks like being a big year for Eastbourne's Aegon International - the world's biggest grass-court Wimbledon warm-up tournament. Held just a few weeks before the Olympic tennis tournament takes place at Wimbledon, there are already rumours that the world's top players will use the Eastbourne venue for extra preparation for these two massive events. Don't delay investigating your options for tickets!

Petra Kvitova, Wimbledon Champion - Can I Feel Smug?!

On the first day of the women's main draw matches at this year's Eastbourne tournament, a taxi driver told me he was considering taking his young son to the event. He asked me what they could expect to see with a ground pass that day. I told him that, among the attractions of the matches on the outer courts were some reasonably big name women players. I explained that a ground pass gives you access to part of Court One as well, and that one of the players scheduled to play there was Petra Kvitova. I said, "She's not hugely well-known if you're not an avid follower of tennis, but she could win Wimbledon."
I wonder if I was allowed to feel very smug today, as Petra was outhitting Maria Sharapova to strorm to stardom in the Wimbledon final.
The truth, of course, is that I was far from the only person tipping big things for the 21-year-old Czech left-hander. And, although I thought she was marginally ahead of Victoria Azarenka in being the most likely finalist from the bottom half of the draw, after the defeat of Venus Williams, before today's match I was picking Maria Sharapova as the most likely champion. I thought Maria was the slight favourite for the title from the start of the tournament. Lindsay Davenport made the same prediction, but shrewdly changed her mind before today's match.
Many other pundits, like me, persevered with the Sharapova pick. I didn't, however, agree with a couple of commentators who last night described it as Maria's match to win or lose. I thought it was more likely the other way round, as Kvitova has a little more in her game, but I wondered whether, when push came to shove, she was really ready to take her first Grand Slam title here and now. I thought she might well make too many errors, like she did in the Eastbourne final.
I'm happy I was wrong. She played an exhilirating match, at times the tennis was electrifying from both players, although Sharapova didn't produce enough of her best to make it a classic. But Petra's triumph over any gremlins that could have hampered her from playing her glorious game in the Wimbledon final was a joy. And a very positive sign for the future of women's tennis. Her game continues the new tradition of huge aggression off both forehand and backhand sides, as pioneered by Monica Seles, and extended by the likes of Lindsay Davenport and the Williams sisters, but adds some extra variety and flair, showing that maybe Martina Hingis and Justine Henin's brief periods of domination have left some kind of legacy.
The prediction now from several pundits is that Kvitova's Grand Slam triumph is "the first of many". That phrase has been banded about whenever a relatively young player has won a debut Major. More often than not, it seems, their career doesn't turn out to be as trophy-laden as predicted. There is, however, more reason in this case to believe we're talking about a multi-Grand Slam career. But that possibility is way too far in the distance to try to look at in close-up focus now. Wimbledon Champion 2011 is a pretty good achievement, to say the least.

Tennis All Over the World

Devonshire Park was still closed to the public yesterday evening, as the work deconstructing the stands around Court One, and the south and most of the east stand to Centre Court, continues for a couple more days. And the grounds that included the outer courts for the Aegon International are being prepared for public and tennis club use once again. There will be several tournaments throughout the rest of the summer, of course - including the county championships that Andy Murray surprisingly competed in a couple of years ago, before heading to the ATP Masters Series events in North America - but nothing on the professional scale of last week.
No sooner has the curtain gone down on Eastbourne's Aegon International, of course, before the curtain goes up on Wimbledon. This year, it seemed there wouldn't even be a day's break in-between, as bad weather threatened to spill the final matches over into Sunday. But with Centre Court less than a quarter full at 8:30pm on Saturday evening (in stark contrast to the packed house that saw Marion Bartoli defeat Petra Kvitova in the women's final a few hours earlier), the event was declared over as Janko Tipsarevic retired at 3-5 down in the deciding set of the men's final, Italy's Andreas Seppi taking his first ATP Tour title. Tipsarevic had been complaining about bad light since the start of the final set, around 7:15pm, and after a 20 minute rain delay he slipped and took a heavy tumble on the grass. He continued playing after treatment before pulling out as Seppi served for the match. His Wimbledon fears appeared justified, as yesterday he withdrew during his first round match against Ivo Karlovic.
On Saturday evening the crowd was told that the Eastbourne tournament was over for another year, and the decision had been taken to cancel the men's doubles final, the title to be shared. As I mentioned in my previous post, the final was to feature hotly-tipped youngster Grigor Dimitrov, teaming up with a certain Mr Andreas Seppi, taking on the recently reformed partnership of Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram (who are no strangers to Eastbourne - the Israeli duo winning a crucial doubles match en route to a win over Britain in a 2006 Davis Cup tie). There was later a change of heart, however, with the final played on Sunday, not in Eastbourne, but Roehampton, South London, the site of the Wimbledon qualifying matches. Seppi was denied another title, with Erlich and Ram triumphing.
So, the circus has packed up and left town for another year. The international tennis tournament is a huge boost to a southern English resort, but of course it's only one of tens of stops on the WTA and ATP tours during the course of the January to November tennis season. In such a global sport as top level tennis, the contrasts of this big wide world were evident last winter (the English winter, that is), as I walked through Devonshire Park, days after the ten inches of snow had cleared (an unusually large amount for this part of the UK). I popped into the cafe which has the newspaper cutting on display, the one that features Caroline Wozniacki extolling the virtues of the cafe's ice creams. Wozniacki raved about these ice creams during her post-match press conference back in 2008, after her career's first big win, a second round triumph over Svetlana Kuznetsova. Now, two and a half years later, she was world no. 1 (and indeed, six months later, still is), and on the other side of the planet, the tennis world was preparing for the Australian Open. Down Under the climate was, of course, considerably different.
But last Australian summer, Queensland bore the brunt of the extraordinary, horrifying floods that brought catastrophe, and even tragedy, to large areas. I was in touch with my relatives in Brisbane, who were extremely lucky to avoid the waters that temporarily engulfed many parts of the city.
Days after the Brisbane International - a combined ATP and WTA tournament (and it was announced a few weeks ago that from next year the WTA event will be upgraded to Premier status) - the centre court was under water.
Sam Stosur, who had encountered the devastating effects of flooding as a child, when the Queensland town she lived in experienced such a fate, was among the tennis stars involved in fundraising.
Last week I had the pleasure of finally speaking with Sam Stosur (in 2008 I was present at her press conference at the beginning of her return to form after a lengthy lay-off through debilitating illness, but was only taking notes). I'd received an email from my uncle in Brisbane to say that he'd noticed she was playing in Eastbourne. I told her that my relatives were very proud of her as a fellow Queenslander, and she appeared genuinely chuffed.
This was after her great quarter-final win over in-form Vera Zvonereva. Sadly, this was one of her few really good recent victories. She fell 6-3, 6-1 to Marion Bartoli in the Eastbourne semi-finals, never getting her game going in very windy conditions, and yesterday tumbled out of Wimbledon in the first round to Hungary's world no. 262 (though former world no. 37) Melinda Czink.
It was the second year running Stosur has crashed out in the first round at Wimbledon after reaching the Eastbourne semi-finals. Indeed, she has reached the Eastbourne semis three times in the last four years, but has never progressed beyond Wimbledon's 3rd round. She can clearly play on grass, even though she believes it's possibly her worst surface. She can volley to back up one of the best serves in the women's game, and has a stellar doubles history, topping the world rankings for over a year in 2006-07; and has won four Grand Slam doubles titles (two Womens, two Mixed).
But she hasn't really lived up to expectations since her terrific run at last year's French Open really put her on the map, in terms of the singles game. There, she became one of the few players to beat both Henin and Serena in the same tournament, on her way to the final, where her surprising loss to Schiavone perhaps knocked her confidence. That's a shame, as she is one of the most enjoyable players to watch.
Many of Stosur's early round losses this year aren't as shocking as they appear, however, when you look at the names she lost to - mainly top players who have slightly slipped down the rankings, but enjoying a, sometimes brief, resurgence in form - or up-and-coming starlets: Svetlana Kuznetsova, Jelena Jankovic, Dinara Safina, Maria Sharapova, among the former; Petra Kvitova, Julia Goerges, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, among the latter. But her 3rd round French Open loss to Gisela Dulko, and now this Wimbledon defeat, are highly disappointing. She is a genuine contender to win any of the four Grand Slam events, but post Roland Garros 2010 has yet to play like that when it really matters.
Yet she's one of a large number of players who have a game, and a back-story (in Stosur's case, recovery from serious illness to reach new heights in her singles career), for crowds to savour; and hopefully there will be many such players gracing the Eastbourne tournament for years to come.

Watch Out For Those Youngsters!

So the Williams sisters may both now be out of the tournament, but there's no doubt their presence in Eastbourne has helped the event enormously, and probably given them both extremely useful work-outs ahead of Wimbledon, considering the lengthy lay-offs they've both endured.
In some ways, it's a similar situation to when they last played Eastbourne, in 1998, when they were both contenders for the title, but their defeats in the quarter-finals weren't devastating setbacks. Except that then they were hotly-tipped newcomers, with their futures as global superstars, and all-time greats of the game, by no means certain.
I still like telling anyone who'll listen about Venus's first tournament in Britain - Eastbourne 1997 - when she'd been sporadically playing tournaments for nearly three years, had been tipped as a future Wimbledon champion for even longer, and came through qualifying (having declined a wildcard in order to get more grass court practise) to reach the second round. Many of my friends hadn't heard of Venus Williams, or Anna Kournikova, who was playing Eastbourne's under-21 event that year.
These were the days of the Williams sisters' distinctive hair beads, and watching Venus play was their mother Oracene, and little sis Serena, fifteen years old, yet to make her debut on the Tour, but some predicting she'd be an even better player than her sibling.
One of the great features of an event like Eastbourne is that spectators have a chance to see players near the beginning of their careers. Over the years, numerous little-known youngsters have graced Devonshire Park and gone on to become tennis superstars.
Not all predictions are accurate, of course. But keep your eyes on up-and-coming Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov. Just turned 20, and tipped as the new Federer by, among others, Roger's former coach Peter Lundgren, Dimitrov's helped maintain interest in a men's draw badly depleted of big - or even medium-sized - names, since the exits of Tsonga, Hewitt, Dolgopolov and Garcia-Lopez. He nearly lost to British wildcard Daniel Evans in the first round, but went on to reach the quarter-finals, where he lost to Janko Tipsarevic. But there's still a chance to see him play tomorrow, weather permitting, when he's due to play the men's doubles final, third on court one, not before 2pm. Dimitrov is partnering singles semi-finalist Andreas Seppi, and they take on Israeli duo Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram.
If you're reading this, Jan and Lesley, two ladies I was talking to on Thursday (by the way, thank you for the strawberries, ladies!), I must apologise for telling you that the Dimitrov versus Tipsarevic match would follow the Stosur - Zvonareva epic on Centre Court. I later discovered it had been moved to court 4, following the rain-induced delayed start to the day, and the marathon opening matches on Centre.
It looks like Grigor Dimitrov won't get to play on Eastbourne's Centre Court this year, even if he wins the doubles title. But maybe - just maybe - those who saw him play will be able to tell future generations of the all-time great they watched at the beginning of his career.