What WAS nice was that I used the cab firm that I had always used when I was with my previous company, and they were so sweet, giving me the corporate rate and stating they’d continue to do so if I use them for forthcoming travel for my new company.
Anyway – early flight notwithstanding, I had allowed plenty of time for brekkie, but as always, total eejits who never read the security/liquids guidelines made for long queues while they argued the toss over their significantly larger than 100ml products! So subsequently there wasn’t enough time to grab anything before getting on the plane, although we did get fed “breakfast” which was not appetising in the least!!!
I took a cab to the Travelodge, Braehead where I was hoping to meet up with a handful of folks from am.com and we went off in search of proper breakfast!!! Thus started the MANY conversations with cab drivers along the lines of:
“are you the only person in England who supports Murray” to which I invariably replied that actually I was on my way to meet a whole bunch of folks who had travelled up to support the team. Then they’d ask whether I thought he’d ever win a slam, so I’d reply that I thought (and indeed wanted) his first success to come on the hard courts.
I met up with a couple of friends from my first ever DC at Wimbledon and left some of my stuff in the … ummm… furniture-less Travelodge rooms! I was a little tired from the week of education and the flight so it took me a while to realise that they didn’t actually have wardrobes/chests of drawers!
Breakfast and a wander around the shopping centre done, I had to meander to Ticketmaster to get duplicate tickets for the ones that annoyingly arrived the day after I had phoned Ticketmaster to get them voided!!! I headed to my hotel, the other side of town to check in, drop my stuff and then headed back for the main event.
The venue itself was quite compact and made for a good atmosphere. I chatted a lot to the young guys either side of me and spotted the am.com crowd opposite me…
It was quite a stark difference to see the depth of the GB entourage versus the Luxumbourg contingent, but there was good support for Muller from his team nonetheless.
Sadly it was a slow start for Ward with an early break for Muller. Ward settled down in the next next run of games, with some big serving when it counted in his games. Muller was a little bit tight serving out for the set but took it.
A bit of a troublesome hold for Ward in the 3rd game of the 2nd set but managed to hold and British hopes picked up a lot when Ward broke Muller to take the lead 5-3. However, he wasn’t able to consolidate, taken to 0-40 on his serve and dishing out a couple of costly double-faults to put things back on serve.
Perhaps not being able to take the advantage was weighing a bit of Wardy’s mind as his next hold was decidedly long and ultimately the second set went to a tiebreak. Too many inconsistencies from Ward saw Muller take the second set.
The third set pretty much started in the same vein as the first with an early break against GB; I took myself off for some grub and a quick comfort break before Andy and pretty much Ward collapsed from that point on – only able to get a game on the board.
Perhaps if he’d been able to get that second set, he might have kicked up a gear, but also – Muller was coming off the back of a position in the top 100 and also a decent run in Wimbledon and a good matchup against Nadal there so maybe was more in the ascendency.
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