Stranger in a strange land

I’m sitting here in the John DeStefano Communications Center…

(just waiting out the crowd reaction)

…after a day at the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament. My tennis knowledge is pretty much limited to ninth-grade intramurals, when I was doubles-paired with Yevgeny Bendersky, and if the other side was making bad line calls, I started shooting for the fences instead of the service court.

Cool things from the day:

–Someone had to have planned this: The night-session stadium-court matches were Justine Henin-Hardenne vs. Anabel Medina Garrigues, and Xavier Malisse vs. Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo. Both those matches were Belgium vs. Spain.

–Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus played in the afternoon, the first of two matches I sorta covered. Baghdatis had a cheering section — not quite last year’s J-Block, but still — with a banner that read “MARCOS” in Roman letters and “CYPRUS” — or more accurately, “KYPROS” — in Greek. Pretty neat. Didn’t help, though: He got beat.

Actual hockey news coming eventually…

Michael Fornabaio