The Tennis Player from Bermuda

A beautiful Friday morning at Roland Garros, and it started with Alize Cornet against Mirjana Lucic-Baroni on Court Philippe Chatrier.  Cornet walked off the court the winner, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.  A great match.  Here’s Cornet serving.

“We turned away from Portuguese Rock, went as close to the edge of the cliff as I was willing to go, and looked down into the impossibly clear, blue water, with waves blasting against the rocks.

From The Tennis Player from Bermuda

In today’s The New York Times online, Christopher Clarey reports on the increases in prize money at Wimbledon, especially for the early round losers. Clarey reports that in 2013 a first round loser at Wimbledon will walk off the grass court with 23,500 GBPs, or about $35,875.  This is great and much of the credit should go to Roger Federer, who is the head of the ATP players council.

The Wimbledon program for 1963—the 75th anniversary of Wimbledon— says that the winner of the ladies’ singles championship—who was an Australian girl named Margaret Smith—received a voucher worth 15 GBPs (about $300 in today’s American dollars) and a small replica of the Challenge Trophy. Speaking of first round losers, here’s my photo of the American Alexa Glatch on Court 14 playing Petra Kvitova in the first round in 2011.  Kvitova won 6-2, 6-2, but it was a much better match than the score might suggest.

Oh, I adored this book! Everything about this just clicked with me: the characters who are individual and unique without being self-consciously quirky or eccentric; the writing which is light and natural, which just disappears into the story which is being told; and the plot which, without any jaw-dropping twists or sleights of hand, is utterly compelling. I ended up reading half the night because I was so drawn into this book that I felt like I was living it rather than just reading it.Set in the 1960s, this is Fiona’s story: Bermuda girl, amateur tennis player who ends up at Wimbledon, half-reluctant debutante, and girl in love for the first time. Everything feels knitted together perfectly, nothing jars or feels false or fake. And I’m probably the most unsportiest person ever, but the depiction of the Wimbledon final had even me biting my nails with tension.

So an unreserved recommendation from me—this is definitely a book that I’ll read again, I loved it that much!

When I asked a NZ Department of Conservation officer if this was the Route Burn river, he replied, “You can drop the ‘river.’  ‘Burn’ is Scottish for ‘river.'” The Routeburn Track is one of NZ’s ‘Great Walks.’

 

There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand, and most of them turned out this morning to block the Routeburn Road.