September 11th

Today I dug out & wore a US Open t-shirt from 2001 that shows the World Trade Center in the NYC skyline. The towers collapsed the day after the US Open ended. I haven't worn the t-shirt since & just put it away thinking it was important to keep. Never forget.

Rob, Anna, Tyler & Hank came over to watch some tennis with Stella & me. Hank seems to be passed out. I'm not sure if it's from Stella, or watching the tennis ball fly back & forth over the net in high def.

After tennis, Rob cut down some palm fronds. Stella thought they were giant sticks for her & sliced both of my ankles dragging one over my feet. OUCH!!!

Keep on Truckin'

Rob designed the most amazing bike jersey for Team PGA TOUR to wear in the MS 150 Cycle to the Shore. I become mesmerized everytime I look at it. It's so AWESOME!

Here's a close-up. He said his Illustrator file probably had 10,000 layers!
That's NUTS!

Here's the template. It's incredible to watch it "build" one layer at a time.

Today SI posted a gallery of the Top-10 Men's Tennis Players of All Time. My Wimbledon Agassi cover is on the left & Mary's Roland Garros cover is on the right.

My Pete Sampras cover on the left was from his first ever Grand Slam win at the US Open. I'm bummed Jimmy Connors didn't make the top-10.

I swore I would never dress Stella up, but on our trip to Petco, she begged me to let her try on this hippie bus Halloween costume. I think she likes it.

Stella wouldn't get any closer while Rob photographed & fed the ducks, turtles & fish.

Rob & Stella were spooning on the lounge chair.

I think they're in love! I might have to rename my blog "Rob & Stella"!!!

Tennis History

Today was the end of the longest match in tennis history. It lasted 3 days (11 hours & 5 minutes) & I don't think this record will ever be broken. John Isner (USA) defeated Nicolas Mahut (FRA) 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. Wimbledon doesn't have a tiebreaker in the final set & you have to win by 2 games. There were 138 games in the last set ... that's CRAZY!

The shortest set was 29 minutes & the final set was 491 minutes (over 8 hours)!!! These stats are NUTS!!!

Since I don't go to Wimbledon anymore, here's my shot of 6'9" John Isner from the 2009 US Open that ran in Sports Illustrated.

Picture Hanging Weekend

Sandy & Larry came for a weekend visit on their way to S FL. When Rosie was here last month, she suggested I hang a wall of my covers on the staircase. I had all of the AlphaLams made last week when I was in Orlando.

Larry & I did some serious trigonometry to hang 45 magazine covers on one wall ... all tennis pix. It looks pretty uniform, but it wasn't easy since the covers were actually 4 or 5 different sizes.

We hung 9 covers on the opposite wall on the staircase landing. These were football, basketball & golf. I think I need to dig up some more non-tennis covers!

It took 5 hours to hang the 54 covers on the stairs. We hung a total of 61 pictures in 2 days while Sandy supervised.

In the Florida room, we put 5 autographed pix next to the traffic light (Jensen brothers, John McEnroe, Jim Courier, Martina Navratilova & Andre Agassi) ...

... & 2 autographed pix under the glass block window next to the treadmill (Martina Navratilova & Chris Evert).

Labor Day at the US Open

I promised the Duck I'd take him to the Unisphere & today was our last day in New York.

Everybody smiles when he's out in public.

Melanie Oudin made some great photos during her upset of Nadia Petrova.

Day 7 at the US Open

 Today I put the Duck to work. He shot the Serena match upstairs with me.

Serena always makes great pix from up there.

 From the dugout, you can get a great Rafa serve photo down court ...

... or a pre-serve ritual butt picking at the close baseline. I definitely wasn't the only one shooting this! The motordrives were whirring before every serve.

The Duck was right at home perched on my 500 in the photo pit.

The Venus vs Clisters match should have been in beautiful light, but when the heavy clouds rolled in, it got so dark they had to turn on the stadium lights.

It was one of the strangest matches I've ever seen. Clijsters won 6-0, 0-6, 6-4.

Frame 16 of a 20 frame sequence of Venus successfully chasing down Kim's lob.

Day 6 at the US Open

Roger lost the first set ...

... but ran Lleyton around for the next 3 sets.

A rare glimpse of emotion after making a comeback.

Roger's left shoe has his "RF" logo & his right shoe shows his 5 US Open trophies. Will he need a new right shoe at the end of next week?

Maria's serve looks great from upstairs ...

... and the dugout.

Seventeen-year-old American Melanie Oudin scored a major upset, beating Maria Sharapova 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 in the third round.

It wasn't until I was editing after the match, that I saw the word "BELIEVE" on Melanie's shoe.

Andy lost the first two sets, but evened it out by winning the next two.

The day session ended at 9:30 tonight with 6'9" American John Isner upsetting Andy Roddick 7-6, 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 7-6 in three hours and 51 minutes.

Day 5 at the US Open

Serena made some great pix from the dugout.

I've never seen her stick her tongue out like this. Waddaya mean you didn't notice her tongue?!?

I love shooting Gael Monfils.

Venus won her third round match in straight sets.

 

Rafa had a makeover since last year's US Open ... shorter hair, shorter shorts & short sleeves.