Day 9-Melbourne

Today was a very eventful day for me here in Melbourne. When I woke up I found out that Bernard Tomic, an up and coming but very cocky 17-year old Australian, had lost 6-4 in the fifth to Marin Cilic, the number 14 ranked player in the world! Vinh and I went and got some breakfast from this cafe nearby which was very good. Then we met up with an Australian friend of Vinh's who took us to the practice site which turned out to be very far away. I practiced with Nick for about 2 hours in the morning on the blue plexicushion courts at the Maccabi Tennis Center. The plexicushion courts play a lot like the deco turf courts from the US Open. Nick and I did some footwork and balance drills in the first session, and it turned out to be a very high quality hit. Nick, Vinh, Hector (Nick's coach) and I all walked to a nearby restaurant/casino to eat lunch. The food was actually very tasty and to make things better, bread and water were free!!! Vinh and Hector then tried to figure out how Australian gambling worked, but were unable to solve the mystery. We headed back to the Maccabi Tennis Center for our second session, which would consist of us playing practice sets against the British players down here. In the first set, I played Jack Carpenter who I had lost to at the Eddie Herr International tournament in an extremely bizarre match. In that match I had won the first set 7-5 and was up 5-1 in the second. After some bad calls and a some better play by Jack he brought it back to 5-4 30-30 when the match was stopped for rain. We ended up finishing the match indoors and although I had four match points, he pulled it out in the end. So today in the practice set I focused really hard and played extremely well beating him 6-2 3-0 before we had to stop. Everything was clicking! We then switched and I played Oliver Golding, a young British player, who I had beat at the Orange Bowl 7-5 7-5 in a closely contested match which included me saving about 8 set points in the second set. I played pretty well in this set as well and won 6-4. Overall, it was a good day. We then headed back to the hotel in a taxi which cost about 60 dollars since the practice courts were so far away. After showering, we headed out to dinner with Vinh's friend and enjoyed the scenic view on the Yarra River. Following that we headed to Federation Square where a big screen TV shows all the major action at the Australian Open. It was an amazing atmosphere there! However, the highlight of this very eventful day has to be that we finally figured out how to play Cricket! The Brits explain the gist of the sport and it turns out that it is not that hard! Basically, the pitcher bowls 6 pitches and if it hits the wicket thing, then you are out, or if it hits your leg and it would've hit the wicket. Then if you hit a ball and it is caught, you are also out. So to score, you have to hit the ball and run as fast as you can back and forth between the wickets before they can get the ball back to the wickets. If you hit the ball over the fence (a home run) you get 6 runs and if you hit the ball and it hits the fence then it is 4 runs. All I know is that when you have a pitch called a googaley and the guys wear a vest, you know the sport is quite exotic!