After landing in San Francisco Friday night, my Dad and I were off to watch Venus Williams battle Elena Dementieva in the semi-finals of the Bank of the West Classic Saturday afternoon – the longest running women-only professional tennis tournament in the world.

In the same session, the doubles match featured both Williams sisters playing Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Nadia Petrova.

Obtaining Tickets
We needed to buy two tickets for the match. Before we parked I got out of the car to look for tickets on the secondary market while my Dad parked. It was a good thing I did as a man handed me a free ticket as I approached the ticket office. Of course, I needed two tickets but as a steadfast rule, you should never turn away a free ticket. If necessary you can always give the ticket to someone else.

Now that I had one ticket, I looked for another. The scalpers were not easy to negotiate with as they would not budge on any of their pricing – a stance I agree with generally. Their prices were cheaper than the ticket office so fans need to decide whether to pay more at the window or pay their price. The cheapest ticket at the window was $45, but my dad wanted to sit in better seats, which was the ticket we had. Plus the section in which we had the ticket was sold out. We ended up trading our one ticket and $80 for two tickets in the sold out area – face value $65. Thus the free ticket saved us about $50 off the face value of the two seats – not my best work but when your father wants to get into see the start of the first match it compromises some ability to negotiate.

The Match
I will admit our seats were great – third row from the court to watch Venus Williams dominate Elena Dementieva 6-0, 6-1 in the singles match.

One could have considered the doubles match better from a fan’s standpoint as both Venus and Serena Williams participated and defeat Mattek-Sands and Petrova 6-2, 6-2.

Tennis has added some strange rules for doubles stating that doubles is not nearly as important as singles – which is true. There is no advantage when a game is at deuce – the next point wins. Also, there is no third set in doubles if the match is tied 1-1 after two sets. They play an additional tie-breaker. The first team to 10 points in the tie-breaker is determined the winner.