Its been a while since I've made a blog update, but thought that a mid-tournament report from Melbourne would be a good place to start my 2009.
We were pretty busy here in Melbourne during the first week of the event, but things have slowed down for us quite a bit. The first Grand Slam of the year is always an exciting time. We have some clients trying to bounce back from a disappointing 2008, and others trying to build upon a solid 2008. The great thing about The Australian Open is that everyone starts the year with great hope. We were stringing for 10 clients at the start of the tournament, and unfortunately most of them ended up being in 2 of the 4 quarters of the draw. This means that many of them played each other quite early in the tournament. As of right now(Monday afternoon), we are down to 4 clients. As much as I like having some free time, I love it when we have a bunch of guys go deep into tournaments. We still have a chance to have 3 of the 4 semifinalists, and that would be something special. I'm a bit ahead of myself though.
One of the things that makes this tournament different for us is the extremely long flight to get here. From Tampa, it took me about 30 hours to get here, with about 22 of those 30 hours being flight time. That is a long time in the air. None of us ever look forward to the flight, but we all enjoy it here in Melbourne once we land. Its summertime here, and the people are all in a festive mood. Melbourne is certainly one city that I would enjoy living in. The only problem is that Australia really is very far away from the rest of the world. Well, at least the rest of the tennis world. I remember speaking to an Australian player several years ago, and I asked him how long he was usually away from home. He told me that he normally left home in early February after the end of the Australian Open, and he usually didn't get back home until sometime in November. That is some tough grinding!
Well, today is Australia Day, and everyone has the day off. So I think I'll end this small update right now because typing feels a bit too much like work. I'll be sure to be better about blogging, and I'm sure I'll add more sometime later this week. Fingers crossed that we have a client or two in the finals.