Carlos' blog...

04 March, 2008 | 13:03

Hey! how is everyone doing?

You must all be very excited about Andy beating Federer, although you probably saw that one coming. Andy played great tennis and he is very happy, as are all of us here.

Let me start with some stuff that Andy did on Sunday. You might already know that Andy visited the Dubai English School. Let me tell you it was pretty interesting. I sat down behind all of those kids at the assembly hall and just heard Andy answer a few questions about how he started playing tennis, and life on the tour.

The best bit came when the kids had the opportunity to ask Andy some questions, microphone in hand…

Apart from the usual, ‘When did you start to play tennis?’ or ‘Why did you choose to play tennis?’, there were a couple of very interesting questions that caught Andy by surprise. One of them was…’Is there any science involved in the sport that you play?’ I think Andy mentioned something about hydration and drinks…before tailing off into ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t very good at science at school.’

The other unexpected question was…’Why did they call you lazy English in Spain?’ HaHa…that was a bit random. Andy said ‘Well, I never heard anyone call me that, I read about it but I don’t know where it came from.’ Which is true; I was there (in Spain) and I’m sure I never heard anyone call him that.

Finally came…”How does It feel to finally have the best blogger ever in your website?” Well, no one really asked that one… but I was thinking about asking him myself one of these days…Just kidding Rob, you’re number 1.

The visit ended with Andy taking a group picture with all the kids. It was a lot of fun. I must admit, I didn’t expect it to be that entertaining…

OK, so quite entertaining - until the man with the microphone asked everyone to put up their hand if they thought I was ugly at tennis/football, and an average to poor dancer.

Don’t care what you think, if you look closely, there are three kids who’ve kept their arms down.

So, It certainly cheered Andy up. Great way to start the day, especially when you have a round table with the press waiting for you at the club and you have to talk tennis again…

So we got back to the club, and there was this whole media thing arranged for some players like Andy, Ferrer, Nadal and Federer. He had to sit down in that table for a while, then have some other interviews standing up.

It can be a bit tiring, but that’s the kind of attention he gets week in week out, especially if he’s playing Roger Federer. He then had a practice session arranged with Richard Gasquet. They hit some balls and then they played a set…

Right-handed, single-handed backhand: Gasquet might be the right person to practice before playing Federer…

Andy took that set 6-4. Some nice points from both players, good practice. Good enough to get the job done the next day. We played some tennis/football afterwards. It’s always me and Miles against Andy and Matty and sometimes it can get ugly.

Andy really wants me to write about the tennis/football; I really don’t see the point because me and Miles haven’t been taking it seriously enough. (Ed: you were down 8-2 two days ago, so give it some effort for family pride if nothing else.)

It’s tough to focus when your opponents are moaning all the time. He won’t be happy when he reads this for sure. He then worked a bit on his serve with Miles and did some speed exercises with Matty Little. That was it for Sunday…

Monday we woke up around 10:30am, had some breakfast and then Andy went to the gym with Treacle to warm-up a little bit and stretch. At 2pm we went to the club. I was struggling a bit because I had lost my accreditation a few days earlier. That meant I had to sneak into the players lounge or just try to be close to Andy at all times. So I asked Helene if she could get me a new accreditation.

I guess she didn’t appreciate all the effort she had to go through to explain that I lost mine and get me a new one, because this is the first thing I got from her later that day…

Here's Helene’s version of me in my new accreditation,

Andy had a hit with Miles at 4pm - for an hour - and then went back to the player lounge. I eventually got a new, proper badge, thanks to Helene. We went back to the courts like 40 minutes before the match started. He did some stretching and warmed up and we played a quick match of tennis/football.

I must say the last thing Andy heard before his match was some serious arguing between Miles and Matty about a line call. Maybe it was an argument that spilled over from the hotel room they are sharing (who didn’t put the lid back on the mascara, who forgot to turn off the hair-straighteners - you know these guys).

All I know is that they were snapping, and their language is a bad example to young people like Andy and me.

The rest is history. After beating Federer, Andy usually goes straight to do some press, which takes like 20 minutes - at least - and then went on the bike for about 15 minutes. We all had dinner at the club and then went back to the hotel.