Its a rainy day here in Basel. I suppose that can be said about a lot of days in Basel. Although its not a Grand Slam or Masters Series event, I've been coming here for the tournament almost every year for the past 11 years. We normally don't go to smaller events, but we go to a few each year that work with our schedule. Its a very well run event, and it gets really good crowds for the night matches. As with most of the smaller tournaments throughout the year, getting good crowds on a weekday afternoon is tough though. The feel of these smaller events is very different from the larger ones. These events rely on making the players feel very welcome. With St. Petersburg and Lyon also having tournaments being played at the same time, players have a choice of where to play this week. Its important for the tournament to make the players comfortable, and hopefully get them to come back next year. I think that Basel does a great job of that.

Our week here has been pretty low key. We have 4 clients playing this event, and the work schedule has been steady. We've been doing 3-5 hours of work each evening, and then another 3-5 hours each morning. People often ask us whether we do our stringing in the morning or at night. Well, the answer is both! Each of us works for multiple players every week, and we need to split the work up between the morning and evening. For each event, if we start stringing a player's racquets in the morning, his racquets will be strung in the morning for the rest of the tournament. The same goes for the racquets strung at night. Our job is all about consistency, and we keep everything as consistent as possible, even if this means starting to string at 4am, or finishing up stringing at 4am.

For the most part, our schedule revolves around the schedule of play each day, but I do get out to see most cities a bit. Here in Basel this year, I was able to go to the zoo and the art museum. Both are small, but very nice. Usually my days of roaming the city are either before the tournament gets going or when we're down to one or two clients towards the end of the week. Most days, I guess the biggest decision we need to make is figuring out where to eat each night. Nate made a great call this week by steering us into a place called Lilly's. Its a cool little restaurant that served all sorts of asian food. The service was quick, and the food was good. We travel to the same cities each year, and its nice to have some regular stops on the dinner parade.

As is the case with back to back tournaments, one of us will be leaving early to head to Paris. Nate is heading out tomorrow morning to take the train there. Glynn has been visiting his family this week in England, and will also be going to Paris tomorrow. I'll be here as long as a client is still in the event, and then packing up quickly to get to Paris as fast as possible. The 2008 season is soon coming to an end with Paris as the last regular tour stop. I'll be finishing up in Shanghai after that, and I'll be sure to blog more from both those places.