The French Open

I am currently studying abroad in Paris, which made for a golden opportunity. I am literally a metro ride away from Roland Garros the home of the French Open. It seemed simple enough; I would simply make my way over there from my apartment and buy myself a ticket.

This plan was set to go to disastrously awry not once, but twice. On my first attempt I became a victim of simple ignorance. I arrived to discover that all the legitimate tickets had already been sold. This sucked. Paris is a huge city, going by metro is an hour commitment each way and I basically had sunk an entire day into this venture. At this point I had the choice of either giving up on this chance of a lifetime or coming back. I made the obvious choice to return, after all I am a sports fan at my core and I can cheer and respect world class talent no matter the sport.
Two days later, with a favorable weather forecast at my side, I returned to the French Open with my friend Graham Rockwell better known as G-Rock. G-Rock is a formidable companion to say the least, he is well known within the UGA community for his love of tennis and Kebabs. My plan was to follow where he lead because my tennis knowledge is limited to the fact that Roger Federer is apparently really good and that Maria Sharpova is quite attractive. While these are important facts they are not particularly helpful when trying to sort out what match to watch out the ten available.

A more pressing issue was actually getting tickets. We had set out the unrealistic goal of finding tickets for the main courts which hold the matches for all the top seeded players. We approached some friendly scalpers and asked them what are prospects were for getting tickets for the main courts. They were poor to say the least, as we were ourselves. That left the annex pass, which basically means you get to watch all the lesser matches on the 10 or so other courts at Roland Garros. The negotiation went as follows.

G-Rock: how much are you selling two annex tickets for?
Random Scalper: 200 Euro
(Now it should be noted that the face value of these tickets is 21 Euro a piece, so I mean this guy was really being generous only going for a 500% increase from face value)
Me and G-Rock: Ummm, we can’t pay that. We can give you 50 Euro a piece though?
Scalper: 180
Us: 100 (he gets up and leaves)
(time passes and he comes back)
Scalper: 160
Us: we literally can not afford to go above 100, I swear on everything I hold holy that I can not go a euro cent above 100 for the pair.

Long story short we get the tickets for 55 a piece or 110 Euro. Pricey but we have enough time to watch 5 or 6 hours of tennis so it was not that bad. The deal goes down on a park bench and he hands the tickets to us underneath the bench and we give him the money the same way. It felt really sketchy and highly illegal. This feeling of illegality would prove to rather perceptive as we would soon find out.
There is nothing worse than having recently done something which was clearly illegal and then being approached by a man dressed in street clothes who greets you with the words “stop police.” This was followed closely by “give me your tickets.” At this point I could not have cared less about the French Open. I was only thinking about telling my parents that I had been arrested trying to scalp tennis tickets and was now in a French Jail which forced me to survive on a diet consisting of baguettes, crepes, and escargot. Things took a different direction luckily, the police officer had me and G-Rock running around the streets trying to chase down and identify the person who had sold the tickets to us. It felt like a chase scene out of one of the Bourne movies with us dodging buses and ridiculously tiny cars, except we were not to find our culprit.

Once our officer realized that we were not going to find the seller, he turned his attention our way again. Now, I would like to say that I acted in only a dignified manner here, but in truth I was giving my best officer I am so sorry I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong face. And surprisingly maybe it worked, after a brief lecture he handed us back our tickets, and me and G-Rock walked stunned into the French Open.

The story of nearly getting arrested would be good enough as is but on top of that we got to watch some great tennis. The first match we got to see in whole was the Robby Ginepri and Donald Young match. Ginepri won, and he played with discipline and calm which has helped him reach the final 16 as of yesterday. He withstood the supremely talented Young’s charges and slowly dismantled with steady play and he is now the last American playing in either draw. I hope he can continue to advance though it seems likely that once he runs into the big dogs who will force him into more dangerous shots he will likely lose. After that match we watched bits and pieces of other matches before settling into watch Andy Murray play. He was phenomenal as he dismantled another seeded player with little or no difficulty (he was eliminated in the round after I saw him however). The speed and power of the players was incredible. Watching them slide around on the clay was truly a unique experience. The French Open did not disappoint and it will be something I remember for the rest of my life, unless I suffer some sort of head trauma which causes me to lose all or most of my memories.