The French Open is on and in Brazil the television coverage begins in the morning and continues all through the day and evening. As you may know, there are no night-matches at Roland Garros, the Paris location of the French Open, so live television coverage concludes before dusk and unfinished matches are completed the following day. Tennis is so popular in Brazil that they even play pre-recorded matches all evening for those who weren’t fortunate enough to watch during the work day – another benefit of being a web geek.
My wife Paula is a tennis pro and former 3 times Brazilian junior women’s champion, she’s more avid of a fan than anyone I’ve ever seen and that say’s allot since I have a friend named Jed, who’s so fanatical about the Green Bay Packers that he’s been known to prepare for game-day by wearing crossfit shoes logo clothing (only), I mean every single item including jockey shorts. Paula’s fanaticism is more about watching the matches on television, unless we’re in Miami during the NASDAQ-100 Open, then reading all the ESPN interviews.
So for me the tennis coverage is almost always on in the background at my house, I work away on my computer and will get up and go into the TV room to watch interesting points or players I like, as they work through the draw towards the finals. Naturally I enjoy watching the drama of semi-final and grand final matches.
At my club there are 16 red clay tennis courts which are very nice to play on. I haven’t been playing for awhile and now planning to get back in the swing of things. It’s amazing the level of fitness required to play tennis, it looks so easy but requires an incredible amount of effort and concentration. I watch the young kids playing at my club and know that most of them could be me in straight sets. It’s such a prestigious thing here in Brasil to be good at tennis. Really a sport for the rich because you’ll never see anything that even resembles a tennis court anywhere other than inside the private sports clubs.
Paula prefers to play on hard courts, says it’s because the ball bounces higher and more consistently. I’m sure she’s right but I just like the setting because our courts are surrounded by tall trees and lush vegetation so the natural colors of the red clay against the green with nice blue sky is very pleasing. The physical side of playing tennis is very gratifying and surprisingly tiring, an hour can pass quite quickly and afterwards, if you’re not used to playing, you can feel as though you’ve been tortured and your hands flogged. Great sport and excellent way to recreate.
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