USopen 2001
Sep/7/2001
by Jess
Thank you to everyone who responded to my posting last week-- what a friendly community! I did make it down to the USO (Lapentti match) for my very first experience watching Mr. Wonderful in the flesh, so to speak... it was almost surreal. We had nosebleed seats for the Capriati match preceeding but I made my move down to some empty seats in the mezzanine section for Pat's match, determined to get as close as possible! With my binoculars I could almost see the sweat drip down that beautiful straight nose and I was in pure heaven. I spied Lara, his brothers, Roche, and crew immediately and I must say, Lara really is lovely and seems so into every point even thought she must have seen thousands of his matches by this stage. I noticed at the very end of his on-court interview, right as he headed towards the locker room, she was waiting to hear every word and then turned and did a little run and a skip down the corridor, she looked so happy that he won. I just thought, maybe Pat can say goodbye to tennis because he knows how full his life "on the outside" will be. Nothing made me respect him more than the comments he made about stepping into reality and finding out what life is like off the tour. Maybe he's not a tireless competitor like AA and PS but he's always been so honest and humble-- perhaps the most humble athlete I've ever seen. Thanks to all for the great reporting.
