No longer beholden to the Western and Southern Financial Group, the Cincinnati tennis tournament went back to its roots and rebranded as the Cincinnati Open this year! Of course I dragged my dad along with me for two sessions as usual.
Due to the Olympics run, the Cincinnati Open pushed its schedule back a day, so my dad and I headed out for the second round night session a bit later in the week than we would normally. The weather was hot, and the new stadium seats were stupid tight, but we watched some great matches unfold. Iga Swaitek narrowly squeaked out a win in the first session of the night, but Danil Medvedev did not fare the same fate. To be fair, his unranked opponent was really good! We ended the night with some ice cream and no matches on the grandstand court, but overall it was an enthralling evening.
The next morning we took it slow to get into the venue, but we still didn’t miss out on any matches starting the day. Also, with no Rafa or Djokovic, and a lot of other, lesser, retired players, the only practice session I was interested in seeing was Carlos Alcarez. Of course, so was everyone else. After some waiting and finessing, I finally got in a spot to snag some decent pictures, but then I got out of there. Instead, we spent most of our day on Court 3, which arguably had some of the best matches that day. We started off watching Hubert Herkacz almost take an easy loss, but he rallied back against Yoshihito Nishioka, who let the turn of event really get to him. Watching four tennis balls get launched into the rest of the grounds was both sad and kind of hilarious.
Next we checked out the end of Rublev’s straight forward match before seeing Ostapenko lose in a three-setter. After that we made our way back to Court 3 to watch the start of Gregor Demitrov’s match (an eventual loss), grabbed some food, and then headed for our seats on center court. Luckily, the tippy top always seems to be relatively empty, so we could spread out from those cramped new seats a little bit. Coco Guaff took a first set loss but eventually rallied back to win the match. Admittedly, there was nothing too exciting going on in the match, so I was eager to go back to Court 3 to end the day watching Stefanos Tsisipas. Blessedly, the skies were overcast all day, so it made for maybe the more pleasant viewing experience I may have ever had there.
Though I would take sweating buckets and having Rafa back in a heartbeat. That might not ever happen again, but I’ll still be holding out hope regardless. All in all, another great time in Cincinnati watching the pros go at it for some ranking points and decent prize money. Can’t wait to go back next year!
