Yesterday, I went to the Rogers Cup since it was Family Day and admission was free. This was the second year in a row that I had went to the Rogers Cup, and it wasn’t much different. The layout and it looks like the sponsers were identical. The only difference was that it was Men’s tennis this year.

Once Pauline and I arrived in the early afternoon, we walked around the merchandise area, picked up some freebies (refridgerated yogurt is very useful on a hot day). One thing that I didn’t see last year was an opportunity to make your own version of the American Express advertisements (similar to the one that Lazaridis of RIM and Roddick have: My life is blah blah blah, my card is American Express). They billed it as a form of creative expression, but it was too warm for thinking so I couldn’t think of anything fresh. At the same place, they also had a pong game which mirrored their Roddick commercial.

Eventually, we made it to the grandstand to watch some tennis, but by then all the real games had finished, so we settled for sitting around and watching a random person practice. After a bit of that, they changed people and I had heard rumors that it was Federer who would be practicing — and it was true. Then everything went crazy. Everyone went up to take photos, and the stadium started filling up. For a practice! Admist the chaos, Roger shouted my name! Well not Roger Federer but my friend from high school, so we chatted for a bit. At one point he asked me what ticket I got, and I was like uhhh it’s free today; haha that was a funny moment.

So we stayed and watched Federer practice for a good two hours against a decent partner (not sure who it was though), during which they seemed to play a mock game (not sure what the score was though. Afterwards, he signed some autographs for the mass of fans at both ends of the stadium. I also took about 250 photos while he was practicing, but afterwards threw most of them away. I think I ended up with one good papparazzi photo which I’ve posted on flickr.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: rogers, sports