Off Wing Opinion

The royalty of tennis and DC were on hand for inaugural home match of DC's entry into the World TeamTennis league, the Washington Kastles. Fresh from Wimbledon, Serena Williams the Kastle's marquis player, filling the seats of the Kastles's stadium at CityCenterDC. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Kastle owner, Mark Ein also welcomed Billie Jean King, tennis great and co-founder of World TeamTennis.

For more on what happened at the match visit some of the reports from other sources:

• Washington Kastles: Kastles vs Lobsters Match Report
• Washington Post: On Opening Night, a Net Success

Friday the Kastles will be back in town to play the NY Buzz at 7pm. Fortunately for us Robby Ginepri will be filling in for Justin Gimelstob. Ginepri is a great player, fun to watch, and will be representing the US at the Olympics in tennis.

THE GOOD

• The stadium is a fantastic addition to the city and a great atmosphere for the matches.
• Attendance and interest is high for the team.
• It is a great entertainment dollar. With the league's quirky rules and crazy colored court, this is as Billie Jean King hoped a format that will attract more people to tennis and make it fun to watch.

THE BAD

• Justin Gimelstob played bad, there is no way to sugar coat this. Both the serve and service return hurt Gimelstob in the doubles match and then he blew a 4-1 lead in his singles match with Jan-Michael Gambill, eventually losing in a tiebraker.
• Sadly Venus will probably not be playing any more matches for the team this season.

THE UGLY

• Justin Gimelstob, not only bad his play was ugly. It looked like Kastle's Coach, Thomas Blake was ready to substitute Scott Oudsema for the men's single match
• If there is a rain storm, what happens? Their schedule is pretty tight and there is no chance of covering the stadium as it is built now. Keep your fingers crossed....

For more photos from the event please visit our complete photographic match coverage on our Flickr site.

www.flickr.com Off Wing Opinion's 2008-07-08 Washington Kastles vs. Boston Lobsters (Allen Clark/OffWingPhoto.com photoset

As always, if you are a blogger and would like to use our photographs please .

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 1:45 pm by Allen Clark and is filed under 2008 Washington Kastles, Tennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.