US Open, Day 2

So I'm actually back home now, and there are 5 more days of live tennis to write about. I'll try to catch up, hoping I'm not forgetting too much of it! So - day 2, here we go.

While my first day at the USO was all about men's matches, the second one had much more women in it.

The first match I saw was Sabine Lisicki vs. Alona Bondarenko on the new court 17. Sabine started out a bit shaky - she kept catching her toss without hitting the serves, but as the match progressed she grew more confident in herself, and kept on hitting winners from all sides of the court. She won comfortably 6-3 6-3, and I even managed to get a photo with her (once again, she looks great, and... yeah).

After that I caught about a set of David Ferrer-Igor Andreev. I wasn't exactly sure how Ferrer lost the first set, since in the part of the match that I saw, he clearly was the better player, while Andreev was spraying errors all around.

The next stop for me was the practice courts, once again. There, I managed to snap an awesome paparazzi photo of Feli Lopez watching the madness that happens when fans try to get autographs. His shirt is the best thing about that photo.

"Nerds love apple pie"

The practice session was prolific for fans - Verdasco, Roddick (before the practice, which is unusual! But he had a birthday), Del Potro, Fish, Soderling all came to sign autographs while I was there. Roddick was practicing with Somdev Devvarman, Gasquet with Monaco, and some other people on the courts were Stosur, Petrova, Cibulkova and Murray.

On my way to buying myself some food, I stumbled upon the ATP booth, where Tomas Berdych was supposed to be signing autographs shortly. Since I've got my priorities in order, I decided to wait there until he comes, and was lucky enough to be on of the first people in the queue - so I managed to get a picture, as well (though the timing was a bit off).

The next match, which I saw from start to finish, was Shahar Peer vs. Sania Mirza. Shahar never beat Sania before that day in main draw matches, so the official head-to-head was 0-4. This match started out very close, going to a first set tibreak, which Mirza won. After that, however, Shahar was much more focused, and managed to win the second set, after which Mirza was visibly tired, and made too many errors to give Shahar some breaks and the match.

This match didn't have as much loud cheering as Dudi's match against Bellucci, but the crowd was obviously pro-Shahar, and us Israeli girls contributed a lot to the cheering efforts.

I didn't intend to see the night session that day, so I sold those tickets in the morning. With my plan for the day fulfilled, I wandered around the grounds some more, encountering some very tall people ;)

At the end of the day, I watched the last game of Na Li in the US Open (lost to Simona Halep in 2 sets), and a few games of Jams Blake vs. Jesse Huta Galung, and then headed back to the city.

Quarterfinals are starting in a few minutes, so stay tuned for more posts tomorrow!