U.S. Open - Day Five

I saw some good tennis today, which turned out to be a day of big matches. Six five-setters out of sixteen matches. Ferrero and Cilic came back from two sets to love to win, against Petzschner and Levine. Istomin-Lapentti and Dent-Navarro both went to fifth set tiebreaks.

But there weren't a lot of matches that were big draws, and it was tough to get a good seat. Also, it's tough to sit through a long match by yourself, especially after a long week of tennis. So I bounced around a lot, checking out bits and pieces of a variety of matches. When I could get a seat, that is. I ended up checking out a bit earlier than usual, so I could keep up with the matches I wanted to see on TV, since they were so ridiculously swamped on the stands. Turns out that may not have been the best decision, because that Dent match was something I would never have expected, but I regret missing out on.

Fortunately, my family is coming in tonight so we can enjoy some tennis tomorrow, which should be fun. We're probably going to hang out in Louis Armstrong, I think, since the tennis on the outer grounds is really starting to get sparse. Basically, I'll be anywhere to see the Verdasco-Haas match.

Tomorrow's schedule is weird, but not in a way that affects me. It turns out that the Tennis Channel has the night session during the first weekend and CBS has the day matches, so here's the lineup for Saturday: Day Session - Roddick, Federer, Sharapova. Night Session - Blake, Safina.

This is not such a big deal, except for the fact that I have tickets to Sunday's night session, and I'm going to (almost certainly) miss out on Murray-Dent and Clijsters-Venus. Any weeknight, those two matches would have been the marquee matches and would have taken place under the lights. However, the tournament organizers are not stupid enough to send those matches out to the relatively sparse subscriber base of the Tennis Channel, rather than the behemoth that is CBS.

On Sunday, they're probably going to put both Williamses and Murray on during the day, and then put Nadal-Almagro and ... Zvonareva-Pennetta on during the night session? I won't lie, if that happens, I'm going to be really upset. When you buy a night session ticket to the U.S. Open, you're expecting the best matches of the day.

We'll see tomorrow, when Sunday's schedule is posted, but suffice it to say that I'm not thrilled at the prospect.