Janko Tipsarevic's best lucky charm is...

Janko Tipsarevic's best lucky charm is..., originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

… Is me!

I skipped off the last half hour of work today as I had just clicked onto the website of the Dubai Tennis Championships and noticed that Janko Tipsarevic was playing his first round match and was due to play later on the same court in the doubles after another doubles match with Novac Djokovic. I remembered this chap doing very well three years ago at Wimbledon against Roger Federer. Moreover, the website said that the tickets for the rest of the tournament were sold out.

Within half an hour, I was there and managed very luckily to get my hands on a ticket. It had been sold out today but a man was trying to get rid of his ticket as his wife couldn't make it, so my luck was in.

I arrived with Tipsarevic 4-5 with serve against in the second set, one set up. After I arrived he won almost every single point to take the second set 7-5 and it was over in 15 minutes. It was amazing to be so close (front row) to professional tennis players hitting the ball so fast, just over the net, putting spin and different bounces on the ball. It looks good on TV but live it is even more amazing.

Next stop was Center Court where I saw Nikolai Davydenko and he won 7 of the last 8 games to take the second and third sets. Amazingly fast he was.

Then I had the incident with the missing Blackberry but recovered it after a while and watched the first set of Lladro against Tsonga which went to a tie break, which Tsonga just won. Lladro, who had just won the singles and the doubles in Marseille two days before retired immediately, which was a pity as it was a close match.

The it was back to Court One, where Tipsarevic and his Serbian partner Victor Troicki were 6-6 against their French opponents when I arrived. Tie break, which the Serbians almost immediately won, before storming to win the final set 6-0, making it 10 games to 0 which I had seen Tipsarevic win in one evening!

The Serbians in the crowd were vocal and funny and very happy to see their men through - and it has to be said, the Serbian men tennis players are far more handsome than the women tennis players are pretty!

I am liking Dubai more but I cannot hate the hotel more than I do already. I spent an hour in my room looking for my passport, which turned out had been held by reception for ‘scanning’ purposes (it was 3 am when I arrived and I could not remember..). Unbelievable!

Now I cannot even post this frigging blog – ‘requested URL is not supported’.