My favorite things to watch at the US Open are the mens' and womens' doubles matches on the side courts. You are up close, and really feel the game. The game, however, has little in common with the doubles I play. The pros handle net balls that would drill a hole in my chest and leave me bleeding and dying on the court.
And doubles does not require a hard serve, but the services of these dudes would probably break my arm - if I could get a racquet on the ball at all. Probably could not, with the crazy, twisty jumps and jigs and jags that the pros put on their serves, which are difficult for the TV viewer to see.
The US Open is a jolly tennis festival. The crowd is ethnically diverse, polite, and well-behaved. When the court judge says "Thank you" he means "Shut up." When he says "Pretty please," as he did yesterday, he means "STFU." People do shut right up. No movement from seats is allowed until breaks, so the Open is the wrong place to be with bowel problems. Everything is designed to minimize distraction for the players, including the line judge uniforms and the ball boys holding the balls behind their backs.
The almost-instant replay on line call challenges is a fun aspect to the matches. The challenges add another tactic to this complex game of wit and talent.
NYC is lucky to have the Open. San Diego almost stole it in the 1970s.
More Show-and-Tell pics below the fold.
We got there early by cleverly avoiding the chronic Whitestone Bridge mess by taking the Throg's Neck, and watched Caroline Wozniacki warming up with her coach at the Louis Armstrong Stadium:
We watched extended parts of four matches, including the Fish-Clement, the Wozniacki, and the Soderling.
The National Tennis Center has come a long way over the years. It's quite the festival now, with live bands playing all around, chefs doing cooking demos on stages, and even plentiful Grey Goose stands selling shots and frozen shots with fruit. We passed on that.
The Open is a very well-run event, and it is staffed to the gills by people who appear to want to be there, just to be part of it all. There are welcomers and helpers all over, and even the parking attendants wave cheerfully and say Come back again when you leave. I think it must have been a capacity crowd by mid-day yesterday, which is around 60,000.
There's that old unisphere thingamabob from '64.
Side court doubles.
In the late afternoon, you begin to see elegantly-dressed people appearing for the big matches in the Arthur Ashe Stadium (which was Federer), but I took no pics of them. We did not have the Ashe tix - just day passes - and 6 hrs of world-class tennis was enough to absorb for one day. More random pics and pretty people:
Tracked: Sep 06, 11:49
Tracked: Sep 06, 12:50