Aegon Classic diary
Jun 10 2009 by Brian Dick at Edgbaston Priory Tennis Club
The award for most appropriate name of the week - I’m not entering this year having won six on the bounce - goes to feisty Belarussian Tatiani Poutchek.
India’s Sania Mirza made Minsk-meat of the world No 173 who stropped at just about everything and everyone.
Things started to go wrong in the first set when she was assailed by a bumble bee and from then it wasn’t long before she buzzed off for good.
Things went from bad to worse and as they did so she hissed at bad bounces, snarled at the lines, was eventually beaten 6-1, 6-2 and stormed past autograph hunters outside.
The irony is she describes herself as calm in her tour biog. More like Poutchek by name, pouting by nature.
n Such combustible behaviour can be the only explanation for the congregation of so many members of the law enforcement community around the main arena.
At one stage during Naomi Broady’s match Centre Court must have been the safest place in Brum with four police, two bodyguards and a gaggle of stewards all keepin’ ‘em peeled.
It was either a quiet day in the city centre or Aunty Mabel’s dangerously pointy umbrella that attracted so much attention. Then again it could be the fact Broady (inset) is 6ft, blonde and leggy.
* And just two days in we already have the first positive diary entry of the week. Customer service in this country often leaves something to be desired but tournament organisers excelled themselves yesterday when they returned the right laundry to the right person – albeit 12 months late.
Little did Sony Ericsson WTA Tour communications manager Vani Vosburgh realise that when she sent her washing off in June 2008 it’d take a year to find its way back.
The package arrived yesterday morning in perfect order with a note attached. ‘Sorry it’s late’. Not my understanding of ‘late’ but there you go.
* And I suppose I am compelled to give grudging thanks to the rest of the press office who paid heed to my whingeing about the food in Tuesday’s diary.
Not only did the entire staff serve me with a delicious plate of sandwiches, cakes and fruit – direct to my desk – they also provided a refreshing Pimm’s.
However, I have to say the standard of transport to this event leaves a lot to be desired and that smelly old blue fleece I seem surgically stitched into could do with an upgrade...
