It was another free weekend at the Rogers Cup the past weekend, and we went on Saturday. I think their free weekend initiative is a fail now, because we just end up going when it’s free! Of course, we don’t get to see any “real” games with real stars when it’s free. Instead here is what we did.
First we showed up and walked around the grounds getting all the free stuff, trying the activities, and taking some pictures. There was no AMEX lounge this year (or at least not on the free day) so we didn’t get any free ice cream, but we still got free yogurt. Next, we went up to centre court to watch a bit of the qualifying game between Serra and Bester. We left in the middle for lunch.
After lunch, we went back to centre court to watch Roger Federer practice. Because we didn’t have “real” tickets, we were relegated to the 300 level. I was too lazy to carry around my “real” camera for the day, so I just brought a P+S (with only 3x zoom). After Federer practiced for an hour, there was an event called celebrity tennis which featured local Toronto celebrities like Gord Martineau, and Nick Kypreos as well as some other ones (Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo fame, former Leaf Dominic Moore, Jake Gold, some actor from Heroes, an female columnist on SportsNet). They had to hit some targets for bragging rights. They were later joined by Andy Murray and Daniel Nestor for some recreational doubles play.
On reflection, the event was pretty pointless, and probably most people that stayed were because they were allowed into the lower bowl and wanted to be close to celebrities. Afterwards, Andy and Daniel stayed and demonstrated progressive tennis by playing against a 6 and 7 y/o. I think that was more entertaining than watching celebrities.