By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
In the words of legendary ESPN TV commentator Chris Fowler, it is “the weirdest U.S. Open ever.”
The 2020 U.S. Open edition of the tournament, which won’t be forgotten for at least a generation, started at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, started Monday, August 31 with no fans. One year after over 700,000 fans walked through the turnstiles at America’s Grand Slam tennis tournament, the only people allowed on site are players, their support staff, USTA and tournament support staff and a select group of broadcasters and media.
As one who has documented a lot of things in tennis history, as the author of the book “On This Day In Tennis History” and as editor of “The Bud Collins History of Tennis,” it appropriate to document the first players to play matches in the monsterous – and empty – tennis stadiums on this opening day of the event.
It was 2016 U.S. Open champion Angelique Kerber who won the first U.S. Open match in an empty 14,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium defeating Alja Tomljanovic 6-4, 6-4 in a 11 am start match. Top-seed and No. 3-ranked Karolina Pliskova, the woman who Kerber beat in the 2016 U.S. Open final, who won the first empty-stadium match in the cavernous 23,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium beating Anhelina Kalinina 6-4, 6-0
“It’s a little bit weird to play without fans and without the support and the atmosphere on the center courts, but it’s kind of a little bit the feeling when you play practice matches against the players, but of course you know it’s like a serious game,” said Kerber after her win. “For me today, it was more also mentally to prepare for the match that I know we play without fans and all the situation. it was not so easy at the beginning, but then you get used to it a little bit.”
Unlike Kerber, Pliskova has been in the “US Open Bubble” already for over a week as she chose to play in the pre-event Western & Southern Open last week and thus, was a bit more use to the barren and quiet conditions.
“I felt better than in my match previous, last week, when I played on Court 17,” said Pliskova of her first-round loss last week. “I think the center court is better place to play. It’s still without people, but I just felt somehow a little better and I had a lot of practices on this court, so I felt just quite used to it. And also, just to play without people, I think that even I just had one match without people, but I thought it helped me just to know how it feels. I still have my team and I felt like on the center court I think there is actually like a couple people. It’s super huge and it still feels super empty, but I feel like there is at least the player boxes where they stay, so I felt like there is at least couple people watching there.”
