James Blake - Thai Open 2006 winner

Woohoo! fulfilled my dream of watching James play LIVE!! When I heard that Thai Open tickets were on sale a couple of months back, I quickly scanned through the participating players list. Was quite dissapointed not to see Federer or Nadal on the list...but still with upcoming stars like James Blake that sealed our decision to make the trip to Bangkok (also, part of my bday gift to Jin :)

We managed to catch the semi-final between James and Safin which was really exciting as Safin put up a good fight both on court and off (he whacked his racquet several times and even broke one). James managed to pull through at 3-6, 6-4, 7-6. The 2nd semis was equally exciting as home-grown star Paradorn was pitted against Ivan Ljubicic. Paradorn was not in the same league as Ivan but he is soo cute! ;) Ljubicic dented Paradorn's hopes right from the start, utilising his powerful serve to silence the partisan Bangkok crowd and keep the Thai out of the match, eventually winning emphatically 6-3, 6-2.

The finals was quite a shocker with James thrashing the higher Ivan :6-3, 6-1 in 58 minutes. World class tennis from James but Ivan was not himself at all with tons of unforced errors.

Our hosts, Nont, his gf Yui and good friend, Pong really took care of us..fetching us to and fro from matches and buying us good meals and the sweetest thing - paid for our tickets! Ah..what great friends :)