Former Wimbledon doubles champion Wes Moodie is Tennishead’s latest star signing and the world No.14 has agreed to write for us from all over the world in 2009. To kick things off the 29-year-old South African took some time to share his experiences from his last week on tour when he and Jeff Coetzee played the ATP Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai featuring the top eight doubles pairs in the world…
Travelling east over several time zones can be quite challenging. I perhaps slept a little too well on the flight over and arrived in Shanghai later than we had hoped on Wednesday – late afternoon. Thanks to a change in the ‘express’ visa service at the Chinese Embassy, we had to wait three days in London before we could leave for Shanghai. (Yes, apparently they do need 72 hours to type your name on a piece of paper and glue it into your passport.)
I reckon jetlag sleep is probably the most enjoyable sleep a person can have, but the problem with jetlag sleep is that it never lasts long enough! When we arrived I stayed awake as late as I could so I had a fair chance of waking up at around 7 or 8am the next day. I went to sleep at around 1.30am and felt alert when I woke up. (which doesn’t happen often!). After trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep – the room was ominously dark – I decided to have a peek at the alarm clock which read 4.30am. I’d had only three hours sleep! Fast forward two mornings later and the most continuous sleep I’d had was five hours. Not the best preparation for the year-end Masters.
DO NOT buy an iPod from a market in China… and MOST OF ALL do not buy TWO iPods from a market in China!
Our first match against Bhupathi and Knowles on the first day (Sunday) was possibly our worst performance of the year. The shock of playing such a bad match seemed to stay with us longer than expected. Although we felt a lot better, the first set of our second round robin match against Horna and Cuevas was worse than the first match! We’d played three atrocious sets of tennis but somehow through absolute determination we started playing better, closing in on actually playing well.
The contest against the South Americans was a hard fought match. We managed to get ourselves back into it and we were even in a winning position late in the super-breaker but we just came up short, losing 11-9. Our third match was against the Bryans and we ended up winning 6-2, 2-6, 12-10. It was the best way possible to finish an unsuccessful Shanghai Tennis Masters Cup.
My family didn’t come with me but I did have two good friends who came along, Jason and Tanya Smith. We didn’t do many touristy things but hit the markets and local restaurants (one of them was a little too local!).
Listen carefully people: DO NOT buy an iPod from a market in China. DO NOT buy an iPod from the first shop you go into. However, if you do lose your mind and decide to buy an iPod, MAKE SURE you read the instruction leaflet that comes with the iPod. And MOST OF ALL, do not buy TWO iPods! (From a market in China, from the first shop you go into, and without reading the instruction leaflet!)
Unfortunately, I managed to do all four of those things. You shouldn’t buy from the first shop you walk into because you don’t know what the going rate is. I bought two iPods and Jason bought one. We thought we had got a good deal but the girl’s starting price in the second shop was less than half what we’d just paid! We had been duped! We tried to ‘change our minds’ but the guy in the shop said that “this is not America”! I guess we didn’t have a receipt either….
So, it was off to the hotel to try our ChinaPods. I opened the box and started to read the leaflet in plain English. The first line was, “Please so operation” with instructions below. Not a promising start. The software seemed like it was cutting edge – if you were living in 1980 – and the rattling earphones didn’t exactly produce that Bose-like sound quality I was looking for.
Jason’s ChinaPod actually didn’t work at all. At least mine could belt out China’s top 10 but Jason’s just did not work at all. We went back to our friend in the shop who had promised us that his iPods had come from the “good factory” unlike the cheap ones around the corner that were from the “bad factory”. My friend did something which had never been done before in a Chinese market – he got his money back for the products that we had bought – admittedly, not all of the money, but two thirds of it.
I was a little nervous that we were going to get ourselves into trouble when Jason said “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way”, but the tactic seemed to work – particularly Jason’s clenched fist as he said the key words “the hard way”! I also reckon our height advantage (of about a foot each) persuaded the guy to start digging into his pockets. It was a good effort. In fact, we may have even got more because Jason was pushing for extra but I managed to squeeze between the fist and our new friend to accept his offer – I figured a blood bath over $10 probably wasn’t worth it.
Other than that, we did buy some other things including a black cashmere coat complete with Hugh Hefner lining (we all have dreams don’t we?!). We bought the coats from the Fabric Market. It’s an awesome place – everything is all tailor-made and you can pretty much give them a picture from of a magazine and they’ll knock it up.
Jason and Tanya were very impressed by the treatment we received as players in Shanghai. Jason played a little bit on the satellite circuit so his airport pickup in the latest chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz was a good start. It was a great tournament to be a part of. I especially liked the personalised silk pillow cases and gown in the hotel room. I really look forward to the year ahead and the possibility of doing well in the London Tennis Masters Cup in the O2 Arena next November.
It is now on to London for a few days and then on to South Africa where the training will begin asap. It’s the end of the season and most players are dead tired. I’m still feeling fresh from my three-and-a-half-month break over the summer so I’ll be hitting the gym hard.
Wes
