Time to Join a Country Club?

Yay, a post from Andy!

If you follow tennis, you know that the Australian Open recently wrapped up here in Melbourne. On the Saturday that preceded the opening of the tournament, we went to the Kids Day event. There we got to see Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Ana Ivanova play a friendly game of mixed doubles (and triples, and 3-against-1). It was quite entertaining, not to mention exciting to be able to see all these great players live and in person, in Rod Laver Arena, for free no less! 

(Image from here: http://hotshots.tennis.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/JC_kids.tennis.day_Web028-580x396.jpg)
Once the tennis exhibition wrapped up, the umpire got down from the chair and started singing. It was Guy Sebastion, one of the biggest artists in Australia, and he put on a mini-concert (along with Sponge Bob, plus Dora and Diego). And after that, we walked outside to watch a practice match between Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanova.  Let me just say, they were impressive. Oh, and the tennis was good, too.

Not wanting to spend $10/person on a slice of bad pizza for lunch, we walked into the city after the show. At Federation Square, there is a large screen where they will show movies or sporting events or....

During the two weeks of the Open, we spent a fair bit of time watching the tennis matches on TV, choosing Maria Sharapova and Andy Murray as our favourites to support.  Unfortunately, Maria was ousted in the semifinal against Li Na, and Andy lost in the final to Djokovic. Nonetheless, enough tennis sunk into the kids heads that we had to go out to play a bit of tennis on the local courts.

Before Aliya and I went out to play, she rummaged through her closet and put together a pretty good tennis outfit. The visor is Alexi's. The skirt is part of a netball uniform. The shoes are from basketball. And the overall combination made for a very cute tennis player.

On the court, I quickly noticed that Aliya had absorbed the mannerisms of the tennis greats, including bouncing the ball before your serve, stashing one ball under your tennis outfit when serving, and wiping your face with a towel between each point. She even began to grasp the nuttiness that is scoring in tennis. Love-15? Advantage Federer? Deuce?  We played for not quite an hour, and her forehand kept getting better and better.  The backhand was a bit erratic, but showed potential.  And according to Aliya, "Serving overhand is not easy."  I think we can all agree on that last point.

The next time we went to play, Alanna came along, and showed that she retains some of the tennis skills she picked up at tennis camp in Huntington Beach.  Her best swing was a consistent lob over my head, which I had to chase and creatively hit back.  When I tired of chasing her lobs shots, I switched over to scorekeeper and ball boy while Alanna and Aliya played.  We had just enough time to play the first six games of a set, and (conveniently) the score ended up being 3-3.  Alanna had a great time, but doesn't want to take up tennis, while Aliya has asked for tennis lessons.  We'll see if we can fit it in between the basketball, swimming, and piano lessons.

As for golf, I get out to play 9 holes before work once in a while with some guys from work.  On this particular outing, Aliya decided she wanted to come along, and even set her alarm for 5:35 am so she could join me. And boy was she an excited chatterbox as we each ate a bowl of Cheerios before heading out. I figured she wouldn't be up for walking the entire 9 holes, so I rented a golf cart for the two of us, and let her drive once we were out of sight of the pro shop.  That alone was enough to make her day.  But there were many more highlights, including my birdie on a long par 5. As for Aliya, she teed off with us on each hole, then we'd drive up to her ball and she'd either hit again, or pick up her ball and move to our shots and take a drop, proceeding along until we reached the green where she putted in from the edge of the green. On the ninth hole, though, Aliya decided to play the entire 450-metre hole herself, successfully staying in the fairway and managing to reach the green in 9 strokes (50 metres or so per stroke), then 3-putting into the hole for a 12. Not bad for an 8 year old.  

When she was driving the cart, I occasionally hopped out just as the cart came to a stop, which in hindsight was not really setting a good example. So when it was my turn to drive, she decided to try the same thing, quickly learning a hard lesson about "momentum." Needless to say, when she hopped out just as I pulled to a stop, she was unable to arrest her momentum, and fell down and rolled along next to the cart. She stood up, smiling and uninjured but covered in grass stains, and said "That was fun!"  So THAT moment became the signature highlight of the outing.