First day of the New Year. Not much has changed over night, but this is the time to look back on the year that we just left behind. I am able to say that it was a tad better than the previous one, but far from what many of us would have wanted it to be.
I haven’t been particularly chatty this year either, but at least this page hasn’t seen the silence that it saw in 2020. I cautiously did some travelling, made it to Bulgaria for the first time, spent some time staring into the endless skies of the countryside where I grew up, and even made it to two concerts. This was the second year in a row when I only attended two such events, but happy to say that I got to see both The Mono Jacks and KajHolst play live after a very long time. I am a certified Trekkie, having watched everything that was released as part of the franchise before 2021. Still have to work on the new ones, but for now, nostalgia brought me back to The Next Generation.
The end of the year brought back live tennis for me. This year’s Stockholm Open was a pleasure and a huge challenge in the same time but we made it! Unfortunately, tennis-wise, the end of the year also meant Hora Tecău’s retirement. He leaves behind an empty space on the Romanian tennis scene, and I will miss seeing him play.
2021 was a year of ups and downs, a year of looking around in amazement, sometimes in a good way, sometimes wondering what was wrong with this World. It was a year of reconnecting, of daring to go out again, of learning to be responsible and flexible and of saying goodbye to a dear, sweet little creature that made the World a better place just by existing in it.
As always, no resolutions, let’s see how 2022 will be like. I wish us all peace, love, health and happiness. Happy New Year!
After a cancelled edition Stockholm Open finally returned to Kungliga Tennishallen. But even if the tournament happened in normal conditions, with no restrictions, uncertainties about it actually happening or not have haunted us up to weeks before the start date. Luckily, things remained under control and the Royal Tennis Hall could open its doors to the audience and everybody involved.
Andy Murray
This year the tournament was moved from October to November because of an overlapping of its regular week with the rescheduled Indian Wells. The chosen week is usually an empty slot between the last tournament of the season and the big finale when the best 8 players in singles and best 8 teams compete in the World Tour Finals. Because of this arrangement, Stockholm Open lost some of its headliners in both singles and doubles. In singles while most were waiting to see Alex Zverev and Casper Ruud, the audience got to see Andy Murray and Jannik Sinner instead. Denis Shapovalov, winner of 2019’s edition remained a constant headliner and, to the delight of everybody, made his way to the final this year again. On the doubles draw, the change of schedule led to two valuable teams heading down to Turin instead of playing Stockholm: Kevin Krawietz/Horia Tecău and Jamie Murray/Bruno Soares qualified for the finals while playing Paris and pulled out of Stockholm. For me this meant that the year’s tournament would not have any Romanian players.
All staff and players started the tournament by getting tested for covid. With a negative test in our pockets we went up to the Player’s Lounge and opened our doors for the first time in two years. Even though the tournament happened under special circumstances, our activity didn’t suffer much: we were just as eager to see and work with everybody again, and, except the fact that we had to wear masks during working hours, the pandemic seemed to have vanished, and for 10 days it was just a bad memory of something from a long time ago. Luckily, it stayed away from us and we had no incidents.
Qureshi/Rojer vs Eriksson/Ymer
This year’s line-up was one of the strongest the tournament has ever had, almost each match was worth seeing. As always, I directed my attention to doubles. I got to see some of my favourite doubles players again as Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and Jean-Julien Rojer played together and made their way to the final. They were defeated by Santiago Gonzalez/Andres Molteni but even so, I was happy they were here for the whole week. I also kept a close watch on Robert Lindstedt and saw both his matches in Stockholm, as they were the final ones of his career. The Swede retired and will continue to work as a coach. It was a sad and emotional moment. What I didn’t know at the time I was watching him was that another player was planning for immediate retirement in another city and at another tournament. That player was Horia Tecău. The news of his intentions saddened me as he’s one of the players I enjoy watching the most, a fellow countryman that I’ve had my eyes on for almost 20 years, traveled to see him play in various locations and woke up in the middle of the night to watch him play in all corners of the World. I was lucky enough to see him playing in Stockholm in 2019. Since the two were a stable team for 3 years, it’s clear that I will miss them both. While I was lucky enough to see Robert play one last time, I didn’t have this chance with Horia but I watched his last official ATP match online. Both players will represent their countries in the Davis Cup matches at the end of the month and then both of them are off to new beginnings in their professional lives. I’m happy I got to watch them, support them in their matches and work with them.
Denis Shapovalov vs Tommy Paul
Going back to Stockholm Open, I must say that this year our activity was so intense that we barely had time to sit down and enjoy the finals. Usually those are the matches when all the team can simply enjoy the tennis as our Lounge is empty and we have not too many guests to take care of. But with a few games here, a few games there, some doubles matches and short glimpses at players training, I did get to see the guys in action again. Even if it’s been just a week since we closed the lounge, I can’t wait for next year’s edition. We will hopefully have more certainty in organising it due to no more pandemic, and our October week back. As for 2021: game, set, match, championship: Gonzales/Molteni and Tommy Paul.
The first live concert in almost a year and a half, and what better way to experience such an event than seeing one of my favourite bands, The Mono Jacks, performing an acoustic set. I’ve seen these guys live before in 2018. It’s been too long.
The setting for the concert was in a garden downtown Bucharest, an oasis in the heart of the city: Grădina Urbană. We were all seated and not more than 4 persons at a table. The concert was scheduled to start at 8 PM and, after a very short delay, the guys came on stage and started their gig. And from the first note it sounded amazing! Besides the fact that I missed attending a live concert so, so much, they’re also the type of artists that sound amazing live and Doru’s voice is to die for. And I am not at all influenced by the fact that I’ve known his voice & listened to his songs for over 20 years now, ever since he was playing with his former band, AB4.
Plus the guys are fun, they interact with the audience and seem to enjoy what they’re doing, or so it shows when they step on stage. They walked us through several of their releases, people sang along and simply enjoyed. After about an hour and a half and an encore, the concert ended. Of course all of us gave them a very warm and long round of applause but it sounded so good and it’s been so long that I wish they played one more song. And I am pretty sure that if they had, I would have wished for another one, and another one, and another one…
I’m going to leave one of their older songs below, go check them out if my post made you curious, they’re on Spotify and they are singing both in Romanian and in English. I hope I see them live again soon.
A year of silence. I must say that it wasn’t easy keeping quiet for so long but no matter how much I wanted to lay out my words here it somehow didn’t make any sense to do it. I use this platform as a way to keep track of the exciting things I do throughout a year and this year the most exciting thing I’ve done was to meet people face to face, chat and have a drink together. And there are no words to explain just how precious those moments were.
2020 was a year I want to leave behind but also one I will never forget. I doubt tomorrow morning, once 2021 is here, things will miraculously change for the better, but I am hopeful that after a while, a few weeks maybe, possibly even months, things will be a tad better.
I can’t remember the last year I’ve been to only two concerts, nor the last year when I’ve only been to only one live tennis event. I missed writing about Slipknot, Simple Minds and the Davis Cup match between Sweden and Chile and then I just fell silent. I made full use of my Netflix and Spotify subscriptions and learnt how to navigate all of the other online platforms searching for movies and films to watch. I turned into a committed Trekkie and made some new long-eared friends that made social distancing more bearable. Many aspects of my life got turned completely upside-down and I think that people who say that their lives haven’t changed much this year are missing the point of what 2020 was all about.
I will call it a day now and head back to my sofa, call it a year even and patiently wait for the new one with a good movie and a glass of wine. I wish us all peace, love, health and happiness, and above all I wish us all to meet each other safely again and spend time together. Happy New Year!
The first day of a New Year is here and it is time to look back on the year that just ended. 2019 has been good to me. I could carry on by writing about all the cool concerts that I’ve attended, the amazing tennis matches that I’ve seen, the people that crossed my path, the cats that peacefully slept in my lap but I think I already wrote about all these things in my posts throughout the year. I am grateful and happy to look back and say that I did this or that thing last year, however small or big the thing actually was. 2019 didn’t feel like riding a motorcycle on the highway as its predecessor felt, it was more like riding a bicycle… uphill…downhill… and running into a bush every now and then.
Again, no resolutions, I don’t think the New Year is a new beginning, just a continuation of a lot of things that have started at various moments in the past. I will see what 2020 brings one day at a time, but I can already say that I have a long list of concerts that I have tickets for, some more on the waiting list, and a few outlines for some tennis trips. So nothing out of the ordinary here. Other that that, I wish us all peace, love, health and happiness. Happy New Year!
Spinning Words 