Bizarre Bucharest and no Nadal to defend the Chinese Clay championships

Bizarre Bucharest and no Nadal to defend the Chinese Clay championships

No, I have not gone mad with the subject title, well no worse than usual. Nadal won Beijing last year and some of the masses still can’t handle the fact that he has won events off clay and last year since Miami was meant to be the “new-clay” as in it’s almost as slow as clay and that is stupid in itself. So when he took the big appearance money and won a hardcourt event, it could not have been possible, it must have been a new surface called Chinese clay. As for charismatic when it comes to Nadal. I am not a huge fan of him and I don’t hate him, but somebody running up and down with the attack of the crabs in his pants doesn’t make someone to be charismatic.

Bizarre Bucharest, well this event is a bit of a Mickey Mouse event, and there are plenty of strange results that happen in here, it maybe the spectre of Vlad Tepes although he is in Transylvania that looms over this event. The example of some of the previous winners like Florent “Que sera” Serra last year coming out of nowhere and winning the title and beating players like Volandri, Mathieu, Pavel and then Igor Andreev in the final with no form to speak of and he doesn’t have much of a game either.

Among some of the fine winners of this event the great Tasmanian Richard Fromberg who was surprise surprise unseeded, but with the afro, he was always cool, even with a visor. The Catalan doubles man Joan Balcells who looks like the character “Monkey Magic” was another bolter to have won. In 2002 a certain young “Froggy” Ferrer won the event as well and yes, he was unseeded as well, then in 2004 the stoner smoking Jose Acasuso won this title thumping Andreev and there is a twist to this tale, in that he was unseeded. This is why the title of bizarre Bucharest, strange results, slightly mysterious place, Ion “Mafioso” Tiriac even though from Brasov, has his fingers involved in the pie and the ladies can be a big distraction as well.

As for the tournament there are some good names or ones that I like anyway. Big Chucho has more important duties ahead that he couldn’t afford a trip to Bucharest, but Yayo Massa is back and maybe he could be the winner of this tournament and I’d love that. He has been playing well in the Bundesliga and just hope he can get a good run. He is in a very good section of the draw, especially since Mathieu is sucking badly at the moment and Tursunov as a #1 seed for a clay event, then you know it’s open.

Zabaleta who has been struggling for form this time around plays against the wildly inconsistent Koubek and as for who I want to win. I can’t lose because at least one is in the 2nd round though with Mariano he is deep in the 300s and he needs the points more, though his fitness is more important. That section is interesting as well with Lucho and Moya playing and that is clearly the best 1st rounder of this event and a tough match for both. In this section the hometown boy Pavel is playing big Boris and should be too good for him and it would be great if he could win his hometown title.

The bottom half of the draw has Florent “Que sera” Serra and the Argentines Martin Vassallo “Che Guevara” Arguello and Roitman could easily make the quarters here, it’s a very open section with the “geeky German” Mayer, Potato Starace in there as well and no huge stand out and with Bucharest as has been shown from previous winners expect the unexpected. Too bad that Luczak decided to lose in the 1st round of qualies, then again the bizarre nature of the event can lead to these sorts of things happening.

Sidenote to finish, the Düsseldorf Challenger final between Korolev and Vinciguerra is something that I am more interested in than the US Open final, it would be great if Vinciguerra could win another challenger, but it will be tough against Korolev who is going places very quickly.