I'm just back having been invited by a friend to No1 court to see 2 mens' invitational matches and a mixed doubles semi-final.
Mr Bahrami has a lot to answer for, watching Andrew Castle (sorry my pet hate) attempting to be funny was tough but he tried very hard bless him.
An opponent retired injured in the first set so we had the ballboys playing schtick.
An excellent mixed doubles match followed BUT
We were really looking forward to seeing Philippoussis,Ivanisevic,Lubjicic and Enqvist play wow that's a few excellent past top 5 players and current coaches
a match to make your mouth water - only if you like pantomime tennis though.
We left after a few games, we just found it too embarrassing to watch. So assuming I'm just an aged misery guts and want to avoid this in future, is that always
what Mens Invitational is about ? If it is fair enough I shall just take a wide berth in future but I just wondered what the entry criteria was.
I think it's an utter disgrace they have these matches on.
After having court 1 tickets yesterday, I was a bit p****d off after matches finished for the day at about 6 o'clock on all courts apart from a few scattered invitational doubles matches.
I yield to no man in my detestation of "comedy" tennis matches. I would pay £100 NOT to watch Leconte and Bahrami strut their stuff. In the making-you-cringe stakes it's right up there with the legendary It's a Royal Knockout.
But nobody forces anyone to watch it.
(The local coach tour operator here runs cheap trips to Wimbledon, They're cheap because you get No 1 Court tickets on Men's & Ladies' Finals Day. I suspect that most of the punters are people who know nothing about tennis, but just want the thrill of having gone to Wimbledon.)
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"Where Ratty leads - the rest soon follow" (Professor Henry Brubaker - The Institute of Studies)
Ah well I somehow lured myself into the notion it was just Bahrami & more recently Leconte. Which as long as you only saw a very short 'highlight' from a match was OK.
I had no idea there was a whole legion of wannabahramis in the wings.
Nauseating is as polite a comment as I can make.
Madeline, divorce is a very personal matter and not something to joke about lightly on a tennis forum - however, dump him now, you know you should !
I managed to catch just the very last point ( I was not disturbed about having missed the rest ! ) or at least what appeared to be a slow motion mimed reenactment of the last point.
And then I seemingly watched most of the crowd cheering loudly and giving a standing ovation ???!!!
Having experienced slightly more of this stuff in the past, on any relative scale it even makes me think mixed doubles is suddenly really worthy !
Whenever I have watched invitation doubles matches in the past they have mostly been played fairly seriously so I am bit surprised to see people trying emulate Bahrami and Leconte.
For what it's worth I like Bahrami and Leconte's routine although there is only so many times you can see it and you can't confuse it with a serious tennis match.
I actually like Bahrami & Leconte, in small doses and when I know what I'm getting. Also preferably when I can turn them off.
I don't really want to go to a Grand Slam event and see really poor tennis served up with utterly pathetic attempts at humour , this does peeve me considerably.
However I am the Under 60 Gold Medallist in being Grumpy for the South of England/London Region so I don't expect my views to be shared by everyone.
There's a place for everything and I just didn't like this particular offering, I had genuinely expected to see a competitive Mens' Doubles, obviously not at the
standard of the main draw, but with the likes of Ivanesevic & Phillipoussis something to enjoy watching.
You should just have gone out onto the Hill and watched the main court on the big screen. I have done that several times when I had Court 1 tickets and didn't like what was on offer!
