I had a day off yesterday to go pick up my mum who was coming with me... and we had complementary ground passes so no pressure to get there super-early, but a quick squizz at the OOP showed that a quick gallop would be in order from the Park and Ride gate to Court 3... never easy with a wheezy mum who sounds like Puffing Billy on a bad day!
However... we could see LOADS of seats available ... and the ground court schedule was pretty good and I was worried we'd have a bit of a parting of the waves, as mum REALLY wanted to see the Williams sisters on neighbouring Court 4 later in the day, I quite wanted to see Elena Baltacha and I also wanted to queue (sigh...) for Court 2 tickets. Now... the Merry widow is NOT the world's biggest JJ fan, so this was gonna be a hard sell as she wanted to hold out for Centre Court tickets... so I spent a LOT of time persuading her she REALLY wanted to see Santoro (yes, really!)
Anyhooooo - we got to Court 3, and managed to get to the third row, on the OTHER side of the chairs from where I was for JJ's R1 match... and we settled down and chatted to a couple of happy campers who'd been queueing all week... that's so totally a YOUNG person's gig!
We did get a bit of a treat - we had Carlos Ramos come down to talk to his 2 nephews (and his brother, I guess)
Kuznetsova v Parmentier
On they came and I really didn't know much about Parmentier - so this was going to be an interesting one, especially given that Kuzy also got despatched early from Eastbourne...
From the outset - it was clear that the winner would be whoever could mix up their game. Parmentier is a good clean hitter of the ball - and both of them were flattening the ball out constantly - some v good rallies and Parmentier is VERY reminiscent of an in-form Mauresmo...
I think where she lost the game was that she would default to trying to generate pace off the ball and hit hard and she was waiting for those chip and charge opportunities... Sveta just seemed to have the edge to read the game - and in a way I wish I'd had the chance to see her and Mauresmo in dubs...
Sveta wasn't really troubled - but it was amusing to hear her stepping up some grunting every now and again!!!
So Sveta safely thru - it was time for a spot of lunch, ice cream, and then to try and see what else we could see....
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