LA Tennis Trip

Benedikt (Benni) Stronk and I followed our love for tennis by making a trip to Los Angeles to watch the semi-finals of the Countrywide Classic LA ATP Tennis Open. This was our second visit to watch a major ATP tennis tournament this year, having gone to Indian Wells earlier in the year.

We made a pit stop at Irvine so Benni (Mr. GQ of the class) could do some shopping and look his best for the occasion.
Once we got to the Los Angeles Tennis Center at UCLA, Sanjay Bhardwaj, who is an ex-SMBA SDSU student, showed us around the tournament site. We had fun hanging with Sanjay and he was reminiscing about the good times he had as an SMBA student.

Benni and I also had our fellow countrymen competing on Saturday. A good friend of mine, Rohan Bopanna (India) played the doubles semi-finals in the afternoon.

Knowing these top professional players has its perks because we were given access to the Player’s Box for Rohan’s match. Benni and I had a great time watching this nerve-racking tennis match and we kept thinking about similar battles during our professional tennis careers. We also could not help but act like experts while sitting on the sideline by giving a live play-by-play to each other on the mistakes made by the players.
After Rohan made it to the finals, we were able to spend some time catching up and having a chat over dinner at the official restaurant on-site. We had some great food, thanks to Rohan.
In the featured evening match, Benni got to see his fellow countryman and former sports Army companion Dennis Gremelmayr (Germany) go up against the crowd favorite, Andy Roddick. Roddick played a near perfect match and cruised to an easy win over the German. Of course, this did not please my temperamental German friend who was constantly fuming during the match.
In the end, we had a great time watching some exhilarating tennis. Watching these matches today definitely made us anxious to get back on the tennis court and try to emulate the guys we saw.
Update: Rohan went on to win his 1st ATP Professional doubles title the following day!