Tremendous Tennis!












 It has been awhile since we took our trip to Wimbledon. It was time to re-join the world of sports photography! And what a cool world it is!

A big thank you to Setsuko for getting us tickets to the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis Tourney!  It was a fabulous experience!

After about 2.5 hours on a number of trains, we arrived at the Ariake Coliseum and Tennis Forest Park. The top picture is of the Stadium Court, the court with the retractable roof. Quite an impressive tennis court! 

The rest of the pictures are from a practice session we watched shortly after we arrived. Amazing! The woman with the blue hat is Iga Swiatek, the number two player in the world. The woman in the red hat is Nadiia Kichenok, and the woman in the white hat is her doubles partner, Miyu Kato. 

For all you tennis players, I hope you notice the concentration, the footwork, the use of their bodies, the preparation, and the flawless technique. These are some of the reasons they are some of the best in the world! 

Being the space case I can be, I accidentally forgot to bring all of my memory cards. Shooting 12 frames per second, I maxed out with 3000 photos in an hour or so! I then pulled out my iPhone. I was hoping that I could use the "Burst" setting, which takes 10 frames per second. However, for some odd reason, I kept getting videos instead of still photos. Oh well! 

I will be better prepared next year! In any case, it was a wonderful trip and a pleasure to see these great athletes up close!

All the best,

Bob


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