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Daniel Miller Click Here for more articles by Daniel Miller  

There is a reason the Mercedes-Benz Cup is not the Daewoo Cup.

For the past week the über-German luxury carmaker sponsored a spectacle of incredible food and beautiful people at UCLA’s Los Angeles Tennis Center. Oh, they played some tennis too.

The world of professional tennis is one of luxury, prima donnas and groupies. The men who played at UCLA this week did nothing to dispel that approximation.

One would think that guys like Andy Roddick and Jan-Michael Gambill were rock stars, with their adoring female fans that queued up outside the locker room all week just to catch a fleeting glimpse of the stars, hoping to snag an autograph or a marriage proposal.

It is quite fitting that the Benz Cup is not a hot-dog-and-peanuts event.

Well-heeled spectators, who spent up to $60 a day to watch tennis, sat down to $28 dinners and brunches at a makeshift outdoor restaurant set up next to Pauley Pavilion. Replete with impeccable white tablecloths and linen napkins, the wealthy dined on three-course meals.

On Thursday, diners started their meal with seasonal berries and sliced cheeses. Of the several salads on the menu, the concoction of arugula with fresh figs and grilled chevre in an apricot vinaigrette sounded most appealing. However, I’m always wary of eating things that I have never heard of – like chevre – although I am pretty sure it’s cheese.

Thursday’s most delectable main course option was citrus and coriander encrusted tuna over a seaweed salad and tangerine oil with an array of baby vegetables, a potato and onion torta. Mind you, I – like most student spectators – am in no financial position to sample things encrusted in coriander or the mysterious chevre. Luckily for me, a small snack hut served more plebeian items like nachos.

I bet tournament finalist Gambill eats a lot of chevre. The aspiring actor had a Sean Penn-esque wack attack in the press room on July 27 when he called Los Angeles Times columnist Diane Pucin a “witch.” The 25-year-old Gambill was unhappy about a column Pucin wrote that included her opinion of Gambill’s tennis abilities.

Sipping on some Perrier while watching Gambill’s July 26 quarterfinal victory over Nicolas Kiefer, I wondered whether the posh world of tennis exists because the prima donna players demand it.

In the post-match press conference, a reporter asked Gambill if he agreed with a sentiment that John McEnroe voices in his autobiography “You Cannot Be Serious” that tennis players must be selfish to be successful.

Gambill seemed a bit perplexed. Confused, he said if McEnroe meant not giving to charities, then he didn’t agree with the tennis legend.

No, the players do not demand the luxury; the chevre makes them the way they are.