The Madrid Diary: Coric the Survivor and Kader Nouni’s generosity - UBITENNIS

The Madrid Diary: Coric the Survivor and Kader Nouni’s generosity

By Remo Borgatti
5 Min Read

The Croatian lucky-loser is still in the tournament while the French chair umpire enchants a jubilant spectator

Ubitennis or ubiquity? – Instead of working as reporters for our beloved website, on Wednesday we should have been blessed with the gift of being everywhere at the same time. It was an exciting day of tennis at the Caja Magica with great hordes of devoted fans that gathered around the grounds at the Madrid Open – far above the attendance average of the past few years. We didn’t have the opportunity to watch the match between Kyrgios and Harrison as the stands on Court No. 4 were completely packed and it was impossible to find any available seats.

All roads lead to the Caja (and vice-versa) – Driving your own car around Madrid is certainly not the easiest thing to do, so it is fair to say that the Mercedes car service provided by the tournament is an absolute luxury. During the last few days, we actually realized that the roads leading from our hotel to the Caja are no less than 140! Probably 280! The tournament has in fact 140 drivers and the round-trip from our hotel to the tennis venue is different with each and every one of them. Thanks to our fabulous and creative drivers, we discover new corners of the Spanish capital at every ride. We drove by the new Atletico Madrid soccer stadium that is currently under construction and we were mesmerized by the night lights of the Plaza de Toros on Tuesday.

Borna to be alive – 20-year-old Croatian Borna Coric won his first ATP title in Marrakech a few weeks ago. After that extraordinary win, he suffered three first round defeats in the following three tournaments (Monte-Carlo, Budapest and Istanbul). In Madrid he was eliminated by Kukushkin in the second round of the qualifying event and was then granted access to the main draw as a lucky-loser after Darcis withdrew from the tournament. From that moment on, he prevailed over Mischa Zverev in the first round followed by another significant win over Herbert – who also made his way to the main draw through the qualies. Today Coric will face world No. 1 Andy Murray on center court. Had it not been for Darcis’ withdrawal, Coric would have never entered the main tournament.

The giant and the little girl – Wednesday’s evening session featured great crowds and an intriguing clash between Grigor Dimitrov and Ivo Karlovic. One of the ball-kids was a particularly short little boy who was staring at the 6′ 11″ giant from the bottom to the top every time that the Croatian was handed his towel. Ivo tried his best to upset the Bulgarian but Grisha played too well. Dimitrov saved his best shot for last: At the end of the match, instead of throwing his wristbands towards the corner where his most loyal fans were waiting for a piece of sports memorabilia, he handed it directly to a little girl in the front row.

One man show – For once it wasn’t chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani to enchant the crowd. It was Kader Nouni’s turn. Nouni is also known as the “Barry White” of tennis. During the match between Coco Vandeweghe and Carla Suarez Navarro, he was at some point booed by the crowd because of a few calls that went against the Spaniard. Nevertheless, the Frenchman with the deep baritone voice also showed great generosity when a spectator literally caught a tennis ball that flew in the stands at the end of a rally between the two players. The chair umpire kindly asked the jubilant spectator to return the ball to one of the ball-kids and, with huge disappointment, the gentleman handed his souvenir back to the ball-boy.  To everyone’s delight, after the balls were changed Nouni asked a line judge to hand one of the replaced balls over to the incredulous spectator. Chapeau Kader!

(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )

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