Anyway - I caught the 2nd set of Alex Slabinsky (GBR) against a very bad tempered Gilles Muller who was doing the slamming of the racket, the throwing of the racket and the yelling at the ump - all viewed up close and personal on the front row!!!
The TB in the 2nd was awesome - some good tennis and Alex won through in the end...
Soooo... next up Jamie!!!
He arrived first and looked pretty calm
Kubot arrived and off they went with the warm up... some slight panic when almost all of Jamie's knock up serves landed firmly in the net - but he found his range and we were off...
He played really well in the first set - he stuck with Kubot all the way to 5-5 (or, as the Ump decided to call it, Murray leads 5-all, first set!!!!)... but got broken to see the first set go 5-7.
He was serving big and pretty consistent in the first - and at the net he was pretty awesome - that started to get the crowd going ...
OK - so where was I... oh yeah - well I'd decamped from the very front row after Slabinky's match because I discovered that trying to photograph Jamie just netted me with a picture of the sunburnt head of the linesjudge... but from my new vantage point next to a bunch of excitable teenagers (oooh he looks a bit like Andy Murray doesn't he) - well DUH! He is his brother, we were soon off into Set 2 land - but not before I managed to snap Louis looking on:
Anyway - Jamie got broken pretty early on, and the crowd really started cheering for him then and he broke straight back, but unfortunately he got broken again and despite putting up a spirited fight back - it was soon all over for him...
It takes a braver Rozzie than me to battle against loads of excited kids and poor Lukasz was completely trapped until Jamie had been able to sign loads of autographs for the waiting kids
Then came my moment - I kinda timidly tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he'd mind if I snapped a shot for his own forum and mentioned that I'd been chatting with Fitzy this morning, wished him and Max good luck for the rest of the tourney and Wimbles and with that he headed off down the tunnel for a couple more autographs and then off
He was really very sweet actually as I'm sure the last thing he needed was someone with a camera - but he was happy to give a bit of time to the fans - someone had a card for him and he seemed really touched and the kids who got their autographs were all really delighted that he'd made the time for them - so he's made a bunch more.
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