Amazing tennis, amazing young ladies
This has been a great week for an all-sports junky like myself. If it is sports, I love it. Couldn’t always say that ‘cause I hated soccer for the longest time. Soccer used to disrupt high school baseball in my day because football was sacrosanct and the fledgling soccer team at my high school shared practice in the outfield of our baseball field.
I suspect I may have told you this before but my mother was the true in athlete in my family. She was a GREAT high school basketball player at Washington High School in Rappahannock County, Virginia, in the 1940s.
She loved all sports as well, and that was most of what I watched on television growing up. In moms latter years, she loved watching tennis on the boob tube. She LOVED Roger Federer and thought he was so handsome and polite.
As you might imagine, she wasn’t quite so fond of John McEnroe or Ilie Nastase.
The Georgia’s Rome Open pro circuit tennis tournament has witnessed some amazing action this week. It’s truly a shame that the COVID-19 protocol has prevented spectators.
This tournament was designed as a kick-off to the new year for players down the rankings who could not afford to go down under for the Australian Open.
Players there had to quarantine for two weeks in advance of qualifying and, for these women, two weeks in a hotel with little guarantee of any financial reward just would not have been worth the risk.
Not that this tournament is going to make any of them rich. The winner of this tournament will receive $9,142.
The winner of the Australian Open will receive $2.1 million in U.S. dollars. You read that right. Players who lose in the first round of qualifying and don’t even get into the real tournament will receive $19,200. For losing!
Now understand, that big prize money has been offset somewhat by the expense associated with getting to Australia, and we all know airfare isn’t cheap. I have no idea what the cost of a hotel in Australia is, never been there.
I didn’t ask what the full purse breakdown was in Rome this week.
I took the week off from the newsroom, per se, to be able to watch the action and serve as their semiofficial photographer. It’s strictly a volunteer effort, but it’s been worth every minute, except when they have had to go indoors, on Monday and Wednesday.
The indoor courts work well for the players, but not well for the photographer. The lighting is indirect, which means the lights face the roof, which is painted white, and reflect back to the ground. It meets all specs for play, but you’ve got to have some serious camera equipment to get good action shots indoors.
I don’t have serious camera equipment. It has been an absolute delight to interact with some of these young women this week.
It started at checkin Monday, when I took a picture of volunteer Connie Sams taking the temperature of Despina Papamichail, from Greece. She immediately asked if I was going to be taking pictures of action and wanted to know if I would share any I was able to get of her. Of course!
She’s good, has won tournaments all around the world, in double digits, both in singles and in doubles.
We’ve had a chance to visit daily and I’m trying to pick up a little Greek from her. Greece is a country I want to visit when the COVID-19 crap is over. Suffice to say her English is a million times better than my Greek, which heretofore has been limited to souvlaki, gyros, and baklava, not necessarily in that order.
Another young lady I’ve enjoyed meeting is Irene Burillo Escorihuela from Spain. She is apparently a friend of Papamichail and when she found out I took some pictures for Despina she sent me an email and asked if I could take some pictures of her.
I suspect these ladies don’t get much attention in Melbourne, Paris, London or New York.
Of course! When we had a chance to chat I found out she was from Barcelona. I’ve been there twice so we talked about all things Barcelona for a while.
Romanian Gabriela Talaba is another extremely pleasant young professional. She played collegiately at Texas Tech, where she was an All-American and ITA Scholar-Athlete of the year for 2017-18.
Another young lady I’ve spoken to on several occasions is Sarah Hamner, a high school senior from Colorado who trains in Florida and is committed to playing at the University of South Carolina beginning next year.
She’s very good and definitely a name to remember going forward.
Another name we need to remember is Robin Montgomery. She’s just a high school junior but she ousted Katarina Jokic, the top singles player at UGA and one of the top women in all of NCAA tennis.
Montgomery not only won both qualifying matches to get into the main draw but won her first round match against Tara Moore of Great Britain. She then beat Maria Camila Osorio Serrano of Colombia to make the quarterfinals
It’s been a wonderful week and I hope the tourney returns to Rome in the future when folks in the area, particularly young tennis players, can have a chance to interact with the pros.