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As the tournament of Indian Wells came to an end not too long ago, I would like to honor the tournament with a little story. Everything described here is entirely true and had not been created by my imagination or altered to make someone else look bad. After all, I’m not the kind of person that would make fun of someone!

A couple of years back me and a few of my friends trained at Mission Hills Country Club which is located in Palm Springs, not too far from Indian Wells. For those who are not familiar with that area, it is located in the desert and most of the residents are over forty. I have no idea why that is the case but let me tell you; for a relatively small oasis in the desert they sure have a ton of country clubs with golf courses. At least a hundred of them in an area that is probably smaller than Sacramento, not that any of you would know where Sacramento is. All of these country clubs sort of compete with each other to increase the number of members by constantly improving their facilities; clubhouse, gym, driving range, etc. But all of these improvements are costing peanuts if compared to the maintenance of endless acres of weeds for the game that requires you to put a tiny ball into a tiny hole. The idea that you can have a field of incredible proportions that you can’t run on, can’t walk on without a collared shirt, can’t breathe or fart on, and on top of that is constantly being groomed and watered, is kind of, comical, in my opinion. But then again, so are the majority of the members who drive around with a “Proud Member of Mission Hills Country Club” bumper sticker on their golf cart.

The dreadful morning came as scheduled. I went downstairs to have some breakfast and could only stuff a piece of toast with a glass of orange juice. Thank God I was able to sleep the entire night, but you could forget about any food intake. I felt like I swallowed a life-jacket and then inflated it. Needless to say I was nervous. Every player gets nervous before the match but… not at breakfast!!! If feelings had a warning system this would be a gigantic red flashing light!

I sat down at the table with Korolev for breakfast and he looked pretty happy. I must have looked exactly the same way yesterday but today I could have scared Michael Jackson with my complexion as well. I remembered the practice yesterday and cold shivers ran down my back.

Hi everyone! Below is the start of Part III of my most recent blog.

Oh, before I start, I must point out that this photo has nothing to do with today's post, but I thought you may enjoy it. It's me, Paradorn Srichaphan and Vince 'Ain't Afraid of Ya' Spadea taking a little tea break during the US Open. It was all very civilized!

'Bageled' By The Best
The night I got "bageled" by Roger I went out and found comfort on a corner of a street where a Hot-Dog cart was parked. After all you don’t get “bageled” that often so to celebrate it I went on a dietary rampage. The cart was full of yummy treats and I felt like a kid in a candy store. There were Hot-Dogs, Hamburgers, and sausages on the grill all waiting for their new owner. Patties of real ground beef were singing to me, I heard sausages rambling in Polish and German and hot dogs were oinking in unison. All willing to sacrifice themselves to bring me peace of mind.

Photo: Me & Nikolay singing Russian Anthem while Don King accompanies as a human beat-box.

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That's it for the first blog!
Make sure to check out the next one in one month!

Take care, Dmitry

Excerpts from Dmitry's first blog in Estoril (May, 2006)

By the way, fans don’t realize how much time tennis players spend online. Dinara [Safina] probably has every song on the planet into her laptop. Marat downloads so many movies it feels like he is planning to open Blockbuster Video in Moscow. Gael Monfils is nuts over MSN. A couple of days ago he was sitting in the lobby and, I’m not kidding, talking on six MSN Windows at the same time. The guy is like Neo in Matrix. He has no idea what he is writing anymore or who he is writing to. He just puts “lol” and moves on to the next window. The girl is probably telling him that her kittens died and he just says, “lol.” At the same time he is listening to Bow Wow and tries to sing along. The funniest stuff on Earth. A French dude is trying to rap! Impossible to watch without a condescending smile!

You see, on Monday I went to the practice desk to sign up for a warm-up for Tuesday and the girl who works there told me to write my name myself. So I decided to play a prank on her and instead of my name wrote “Thomas Zib + Bill Clinton” and left after that. This morning when I showed up to see what court I was on, I see, “Thomas Zib + Bill Clinton + Nicholas Massu” Apparently, Thomas thought it was a joke, (I guess he was correct in that assumption) and in fear that he was going to be left without a hit decided to hit with Massu. Read the full blog