We made it back to Mason for the third time in this year’s tournament (see previous postings here and here) and we watched the quarterfinal match between Nadal and Lapentti. Since the man from Ecuador is no youngster (he beat Nadal in their only previous head-to-head competition 5 years ago), I was concerned that we were going to watch a quick match. However, Lapentti (ranked around 80th in the world) played some very spirited tennis for the first 90 minutes. In the end, it appeared that it was Nadal’s superior conditioning that won the match 7-6, 6-1.
We arrived about 30 minutes before match time so we sauntered over to the ESPN broadcast booth (see photo below), where Brad Gilbert (in the background, behind Missy) was extolling the virtues of his last protege, Andy Murray. We also watched a beautiful sunset over the Stadium Court scoreboard…
