WTA Tennis From Charleston • Eating Your Way Across The Volvo Car Open

Tomorrow’s #VolvoCarOpen schedule is live, and includes a packed round of play! 2017 champion @DKasatkina starts her title defense tomorrow at 7pm. Who will be watching? – Photo by @VolvoCarOpen via Twitter.

 

 

By Craig Cignarelli

 

The strange thing about Charleston’s WTA event’s sponsor booth selection is the synergy of it all. The white tents and sanitized smells merge with various food trucks and pop-up booths to bring a circus-like atmosphere to the site. There are pretty girls pedaling drinks and stethoscoped nurses taking pulses and chefs with big hats offering come-hither glances as they slather greasy food with extra helpings of vegetable oil.

 

If you take the proper path, here’s the walking order: Brown Fox coffee’s pop-up stand greets you with a morning cuppa and a white-toothed hostess who says things like “sugar, Sugar?” Next is Ben n’ Jerry’s and if you time it right, your coffee will be half drunk and you can ladle in one scoop and be all the higher for day. A cinnamon sugar pretzel from BKed tacks on a few more sweet kcals before the hardcore stuff begins. Johnnie Walker and Soda has a pop up stand with a line that suggests Charleston is going to need more beds at their addiction clinic. The Mac Daddy Mac and Cheese food truck has four small children whose faces appear to have been attacked by their food and now add yellow smiles to what looks like a miniaturized horror film or an Ebola outbreak. The final truck is Bac’n me Crazy which offers bacon on a stick, on a bun, on cheese and in ways I’d rather not discuss.

 

As the path continues, the synergy kicks in. First, after all that eating, they assume you’ve probably suffered a bit and there’s a natural deodorant stand and a neck pain massage tent. For your viewing pleasure, a young woman with a permanent grin will display children’s tennis clothes for you as another smaller woman kneads your sub-cranial muscles. The final stop before you hit the courts is a Free Blood Pressure exam along with an Oral Cancer checkup, both of which are so apropos after the gustatory destruction you’ve just done. The irony is the three ladies working the medical tent are the planet’s nicest human beings, and the odds of getting a good read surrounded by this much compassion and TLC, after twelve pounds of bacon and cheese are about as good as Madison Keys hitting a forehand dropshot.

 

Main draw started today but I missed the matches due to intestinal cramps and a near diabetic incident. l’ll report more on play tomorrow.

 

Main Draw Singles

Main Draw Doubles

Qualifying Singles

Order Of Play