Soon, you too can compete in the Masters Cup!
I scored some sweet Masters Cup tickets on Monday thanks to Shamus — who always has a VIP ticket for something — and the friendly people at Haworth office furniture. The brand new Qi Zhong Stadium is nice, really nice, a proper stadium. It has air conditioning, which immediately makes it better than most of the sports arenas in China. You have to wonder, though — why is it almost in Anhui Province? OK, it’s just a 100 kuai cab ride from city center, but weren’t there some vacant plots of land or bulldozable neighborhoods, say, 20 minutes from the city instead of 50? It’s a hike. And what are they going to do with a tennis stadium the other 51 weeks out of the year?
Anyway, the building is worth seeing even if the tennis no longer is. I managed to see Andre Agassi’s only match before he joined Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, Lleyton Hewitt and Rafael Nadal and withdrew from the tournament. Really, the way he played, his exit from the tourney was only a matter of time. Nadal came out to court to apologize to the fans for not being able to compete due to a foot injury. He could of at least limped! So, now we are left with Roger Federer and these “masters”: Guillermo Coria, Nikolay Davydenko, Ivan Ljubicic, Gaston Gaudio, David Nalbandian, Mariano Puerta and Fernando Gonzalez. Half the field is from Argentina … not that there is anything wrong with that.
11.16.2005, 5:38 PM · Photos, Sports · Comments (3)
