www.mfwweb.com/tennis/IW05 -> www.mfwweb.com/tennis/IW05/
This web site presents pictures taken at The Pacific Life Open professional tennis tournament in Indian Wells, CA on March 7-9, 2005. These pictures are from women's qualifying matches, first round main draw matches, and practice sessions. Players are presented in order of singles rankings as of February 28, 2005. Place your cursor over a thumbnail to find out how large the image or animation file is. Thumbnails with a big 'Q' on them are links to Quicktime animations of a player hitting a few strokes. All pictures were taken with an Olympus E100rs digital camera. Thanks to the WTA, the players, and the Indian Wells Tennis Garden for allowing me to take these pictures.
Both players were in good spirits and working pretty hard during this session. Amelie and Justine Henin-Hardenne have the best one-handed backhands I've seen amongst women players the last few years.
Tatiana has shot up the rankings very quickly in the last year. Though she doesn't look like a world class athlete in same way that Amelie does, Tatiana can really bang the tennis ball. As you can see from the pictures, she was working herself fairly hard in this session. Must say that her pink practice outfit is quite photogenic. She is known for wearing low cut shorts, which these pictures show quite clearly.
Maria is one of the brigade of young Russian players making their way up the rankings. Most of these pictures are from her first round qualifying match against Tina Pisnik (#173). This was considered one of the best matches in the qualifying event, featuring lots of great points. Tina was doing the most running of two, because Maria's groundstrokes are more aggressive. Tina eventually had to retire at 4-0 for Maria in the third set. You could see she was laboring, but it was not clear what the nature of the problem was. Heard later that it was a chronic neck problem that acted up.
The Quicktime animation below shows match point, which Marta won with a drop shot which clipped the net and dropped in for a winner. You can see Marta apologize for the lucky shot on the way to the net to shake hands. Marta won this match because she actually raised the level of her game towards the end of the 3rd set when the pressure was greatest.
Anna is another young, Russian player with a LOT of potential. She moves quickly, has good anticipation, and beautiful strokes. These pictures are from her first round main draw match with Martina Sucha (#60). This match was played at night under the lights, which is why none of the pictures are action shots. Anna won this match fairly easily (6-0, 6-1), even though Martina is ranked above her. This is additionally surprising because Anna was suffering from some sort of physical problem, which had her doubling over in pain after points towards the end of the match. Anna hit lots of winners off the ground and with her serve, whereas it seemed like Martina had to come up with a gargantuan effort to win a point.
These pictures are from her second round qualifying match against Maureen Drake (#191). However, on this day Mariana was simply too consistent for Maureen, winning the match 7-5, 6-2 to move on to the main draw. At the time of this writing Mariana has won her first two matches in the main draw against Brandi (#77) and Dulko (#32).
At 28, Emmanuelle is one of the senior ladies on the tour. These pictures are from her first round qualifying match against American Anne Yelsey (#763) who was given a wild card into the qualifying event. Emmanuelle won this match in two sets and went on to qualify for the main draw where she lost in the first round to 17 year old wild card - Viktoriya Kutuzova (#473). Emmanuelle has an athletic way of launching herself (both feet off the ground) into her forehand which I wasn't able to capture in these pictures.
Though I've seen her name in print many times, this was the first time I had seen Melinda in person. She won her first round match against Vanina Garcia Sokol (#193) of Argentina. These shots are from her second round loss to Rika Fujiwara (#153) of Japan. In the main draw, Rika went on to defeat Jidkova (#54) in the first round and Schiavone (#17) in the second round, a great showing for Rika which translates into not such a bad loss for Melinda.
These images are from her first round win over Delia Sescioreanu (#151) of Romania. Eva has pretty strokes and a calm attitude which makes her enjoyable to watch. In her next match she upset #11 seed Julia Schruff (#105) of Germany to qualify for the main draw where she took out Tanasugarn (#68) in the first round! Her good run came to an end in the second round of the main draw where she lost to Kuznetsova (#7) 6-3, 6-2. The heavy wrap on Eva's left thigh did not seem to hamper her mobility.
I chose to shoot Sandra because of her colorful dress, the fact that she wasn't wearing a a cap or visor, and because I haven't shot her before. Don't believe I had even seen a picture of her before I shot this match. These images are from her first round qualifying loss to #22 seed, Laura Pous Tio (#140) of Spain 6-4, 6-3. I was so busy taking pictures, I couldn't tell you why Pous Tio won. In the end, none of the seeds from this qualifying bracket made it into the main draw.
At the tender, young age of 22, Maria is almost a veteren of the WTA Tour. But she showed her true level of talent by taking out #14 seed Catalina Castano (#113) of Columbia 6-0, 6-2. In her 2nd round qualifying match she defeated a slumping Dokic (#208) 7-6, 6-0.
It was a close, tense, affair which Marta won 6-4 in the 3rd set. They were very evenly matched, but Maria tightened up a bit towards the end, while Marta kicked it up into a higher gear to take the match.
In addition to a large, modern, stadium (not shown here), there are about 15 outer courts designed to host tournament level play. This means they are recessed into the ground with large, tiered steps on both sides made to hold seating. Image 2 shows one of the entrances to the upper level of the stadium. The outside of Stadium #2 (really just an outer court with lots of bleachers) is shown in images 4 and 6 The white tents in front of the court are vendor tents. The food concessions are about 100 yards from any of the tennis courts (to the left). One of the proprietors is shown in image 5 This guy makes a mean frappacino.
The images were shot at 15 frames/second and are played back at 10 frames/second. Thus you are viewing them in slow motion - specifically at 2/3 real time. Since these animations are made from still images they have no sound. The Quicktime animations above this section were made in a different way. They were captured in real time by the camera at 15 fps with sound. They are also displayed at 15 fps, thus you are viewing them in real time. The images making up the in-camera clips were captured at 320 x 240 pixels and highly compressed. Thus they are of lower visual quality than the images making up the animations below which were shot at 1360 x 1024 pixels, scaled down, and cropped before being compressed into Quicktime format.
Notes 1) As usual Charlie Pasarell and his crew put on a very fan-friendly event. The atmosphere here is definitely more laid back than at other pro tennis tournaments I attend. If you like to take pictures of players in action this is the ideal place to do it. You have access to practice courts from many different angles. The courts outside the main stadium used for matches are also good for photography in that bleachers are set up on both sides of the court. All matches occur on theoutside courts which have chairs and bleachers set up. You can sit virtually anywhere youlike around the court. All qualifying matches are refereed with fully functional, electronic scoreboards in operation. I saw more Russians on the practice courts than from any other country. Between the players, I heard Russian spoken more than any other language.
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