Its been a few years since I've been to the tennis pavillion at IUPUI. I've only ever gone for one of the (unfortunately) best-kept secret sporting events in Indy, the ATP Indianapolis Tennis Championships. We've got world class tennis happening downtown, and judging by last nights crowd, not many people know about it.
The last time I headed down it was because I was asked to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the evenings festivities. This year, an Indy Hub event got me down that way.
It was first round action, and it was a Tuesday but Roddick and Blake were scheduled to play back to back matches so I grabbed a couple cheap seats and Nancy and we headed downtown.
This was the first Indy Hub event I had been to, so after finding the all-but-hidden designated meeting place, saying hello to the Mollies and grabbing a six dollar beer we didn't have much time to meet new people. So we quickly took a seat at an empty table and scoped out the room to see who we would go introduce ourselves to. We identified our targets, another couple that had also grabbed an equally empty table, then came up with our battle plan. We'd head to the food table, pile a plastic plateful of pretzels, and casually stop by their table on the way back. Its all about the motivation baby!
Our plan worked great, except that as we started heading towards their table, THEY got up and headed towards the food table. We weren't quick enough on our feet to improvise a mid-room, mobile introduction, so we made quick work of the pretzels and headed off to the seats.
"We'll get here earlier next time" We noted aloud.
We found our seats in the bleachers on the West end of the court and settled in for some tennis. Roddick, the number 1 seed in this tournament, was matched with Kozofsky (that's not his name, but its the best I can recall without googling), the last seed. We thought Roddick would make quick work of him, but after a 6-4 first set in Roddicks favor, it was clear that he was at least going to put up a fight.
The second set was a different story though, Roddick quickly went up 4-0 and ended up sealing the deal 6-2. Man that guy can play! One of his serves registered 148mph on the radar gun.
Blake and Johannsen were up next. Blake won this entire tournament last year, is ranked 9th in the world and currently has a best selling autobiography on the market, so you could say he had his mojo working. Johannsen is ranked 72nd in the world, so again we thought quick work would be applied. Not so.
Blake eaked out a 7-5 win in the first set, after a couple drawn-out deuce sessions, and some pretty great rallys. After a strong start from Blake in the second set, it ended up 6-6 and these two pretty evenly matched players, who had been trading advantages all night started a tie-breaker.
I don't know much about tennis scoring but I think you play to 7 points and you have to win by two. These guys kept trading points up to 8, then Blake finally got one step closer to defending his title by winning set two, 7-6.
I love the summer in Indianapolis, specifically for events like these. The weather was too perfect, so much so that I felt the whispering threat of winter in my ear. "Enjoy it, I'm coming" it said.
Roddick plays again tonight, and Blake again on Thursday. I recommend not sitting in the bleachers (although they are the cheapest ticket) but rather sitting in either of the sections directly behind the playes where they have actual 'seats'. The bleachers were a tad bit cramped, and not terribly comfortable. But whether you sit in the bleachers, or the Heineken VIP suite, I recommend you go. If for no other reason than supportting great events like this in our city.