Soon, you too can compete in the Masters Cup!
I scored some sweet Masters Cup tickets on Monday thanks to Shamus — who always has a VIP ticket for something — and the friendly people at Haworth office furniture. The brand new Qi Zhong Stadium is nice, really nice, a proper stadium. It has air conditioning, which immediately makes it better than most of the sports arenas in China. You have to wonder, though — why is it almost in Anhui Province? OK, it’s just a 100 kuai cab ride from city center, but weren’t there some vacant plots of land or bulldozable neighborhoods, say, 20 minutes from the city instead of 50? It’s a hike. And what are they going to do with a tennis stadium the other 51 weeks out of the year?
Anyway, the building is worth seeing even if the tennis no longer is. I managed to see Andre Agassi’s only match before he joined Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, Lleyton Hewitt and Rafael Nadal and withdrew from the tournament. Really, the way he played, his exit from the tourney was only a matter of time. Nadal came out to court to apologize to the fans for not being able to compete due to a foot injury. He could of at least limped! So, now we are left with Roger Federer and these “masters”: Guillermo Coria, Nikolay Davydenko, Ivan Ljubicic, Gaston Gaudio, David Nalbandian, Mariano Puerta and Fernando Gonzalez. Half the field is from Argentina … not that there is anything wrong with that.
Speaking of Federer, I had a chance to meet him before Agassi’s match. By “meet” I mean I hovered in his vicinity while someone took photos. (Shamus did, too.) Federer had to “meet” many roomfuls of corporate VIPs (and their blogger friends) that night, and he was very polite and smiled often. Good guy. Our seats were spectacular, as you can tell from my very average photos of the evening. They were, in fact, the best seats I’ve ever had for a professional sporting event. Second row, right next to the boxes reserved for the players’ families (which were empty).
If you are planning on going to see some tennis, I can say that there appeared to be plenty of open seats. Failing that, there were lots of scalpers outside the stadium — that, and the requisite man pissing in the bushes.
I was actually interviewed by a Chinese television crew before I walked through the metal detectors at the stadium. Here is the exact transcript from the interview:
Reporter: Are you working in Shanghai?
Me: Yes.
Reporter: So, you came from the office?
Me: (Pauses to decide whether he should explain that he works from home.) Yes.
Reporter: OK. Thank you!
Me: That’s it?
Reporter: Yes.
Here are my photos. I also attended the Masters Cup in 2004.
3 Comments
I did make it to the match on Monday.
What a shame Andrea had strained his ankle…
I’ve found that whenever some building doesn’t make much sense in China, the blame probably should go to some government official’s relative’s friend’s doctor’s cousin.
But man! Everything’s coming to (or around) Shanghai these days. I hope something’s there for me to catch this winter vacation!
I’ve found that when something doesn’t make sense in China, you should probably put the blame on some government official’s relative’s friend’s doctor’s cousin.
That having been said, I didn’t remember all these big name sports/awesome obscure-er music events happening four years ago. You go to college and EVERYTHING changes.