Their white socks turned brown. Hair, disheveled. Frowns covered their faces. They sprinted. Scrambled left, front, right. They banged 22 shots. Then 19. Then 24. Dirt stuck glued underneath the soles of their blue Nikes. Their legs, spring chickens at the first point, wobbled. It was tiresome, grueling and, after over 185 minutes, they still had not finished.
On their fingers, they gripped swords. Rafael Nadal chopped his through the Paris wind while Roger Federer swung and sliced. The red surface they stepped on? The French call it “le terre battue” or red clay. But no, it wasn’t. It was red blood. From the wounds they inflicted upon each other, the rectangle turned into a pool of red blood.
Don’t you find her pretty? She is. I hope you watched her semi-final match against Maria Sharapova. If you had to choose one to date on a romantic, candlelit dinner, who’d it be? The blonde or the dark-haired beauty? I know my favorite dentist, Dr. Nonito Narvasa, will choose Maria (he’s professed obsession over her), but I’ll go for Ana—not Anna Kournikova—but Ana Ivanovic.
The French Open—also known as “Roland Garros,” in honor of the heroic French aviator who braved the clouds during World War I—is the only tennis Grand Slam sortie played on clay. The U.S. and Australian Opens are on hard-court; Wimbledon is on grass. The difference?Clay is slow. On cement, the ball skids off the floor. On grass, it’s even speedier—the ball ricochets. Clay? The yellow ball bounces up… up…, then it floats… floats…
Last May 19 to 23, Cebu held the biggest junior tennis event in the Visayas and Mindanao: The Gullas Tennis Cup. Now on its 12th year, the event attracted 216 entries of boys and girls aged as young as seven years old and as old as 21 years old. Thanks to the tennis-loving tandem of Congressman Eddie and Dodong Gullas, this event has thrived and smashed in Cebu!