Overheard one morning in the photographers’ lounge beneath Arthur Ashe Stadium: “Is it too much to ask for some short matches today?” “A few retirements?” echoed the man’s colleague.
A record number of players retired, but they weren’t the only ones felled by injuries. On the first Sunday, Bud Collins took a spill and damaged his knee, necessitating an early return to Boston. (Here’s to a lot more Grand Slams for Bud.)
On the shuttle back into Manhattan one night, a young man looked across the aisle and asked a woman sitting alone if she was from Miami. “No, Scotland,” she said. She looked familiar because she was Andy Murray’s mother. She took a well-deserved break from her iPhone and thoughtfully answered the man’s questions about when and how to introduce his children to tennis.
The photographer sitting next to me watched the first set of the Rafael Nadal-David Nalbandian match on the TV above her work station. “I like to wait,” she said, “until they get sweaty.”
Spotted the first weekend: Two monks in light brown robes and sandals, both with shaved heads and bushy beards.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga wore – and apparently always wears – his wristband on his non-hitting arm.
“How’s your evening going?” the driver of the M57 bus asked his only passenger just around midnight. “Great,” I said. “I’m coming back from the tennis.” “I’ve been wanting to go out there,” he said. “How much are tickets?” “I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m a journalist. I get in free.” “You get in free?!? Man, you got it good. You must get all the women.”
During lunch in the food court with two young Korean-American women, the conversation turned to the female players. “I know people say Asians all look alike,” one of the women said, “but they all look alike.”
The “Got Nadal?” T-shirt seen on the grounds was answered, in a way, by the one that read “Roger That!”
Worst thing about the Open (besides the rain)? During a changeover looking up at the screen, hoping to find scores from other matches, and seeing a commercial. Then forgetting to look the next time they showed the scores.
My friend Bob told me that, at the Novak Djokovic-Alexandr Dolgopolov match, he was sitting next to a Ukrainian couple and their 13-year-old daughter, who had been playing tennis for five years already. “I asked her,” Bob said, “if she watched a match for enjoyment, or to learn things she could use in her own game.” “And?” I asked. He thought for a few seconds, his face taking on a pained expression, and said: “Thirteen-year-old girls are not the most articulate people. Which is great if you’re a 14-year-old boy.”
After a tough fourth-round loss to Tsonga, Mardy Fish spoke enthusiastically at his press conference about the possibility of his hometown, Vero Beach, FL, hosting the U.S.A.-Belarus Fed Cup matches next year.
At 15-0 in the tenth game of their second set, Andrea Petkovic and Carla Suarez Navarro had a 47-shot rally. At its conclusion, Petkovic, squatting in exhaustion inside the baseline, and Suarez Navarro, on hands and knees at the net, looked across at each other and smiled.
During the post-match interview, MaliVai Washington asked Petkovic if she were going to watch the evening match featuring her next opponent; perhaps, he said, “eat a pizza, kick back.” “Well, pizza is bad,” Petkovic said, in the tournament’s finest Michael Pollan moment, “but maybe some vegetables and salad.”
That match, featuring Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova, preceded Roger Federer vs. Juan Monaco in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Because of a late start, the three-set struggle took up most of the night. At a little after 10, an impatient fan shouted out between points: “Come on, Roger!”
Seeing me still in the apartment Tuesday morning, my hostess – who knows nothing about sports – asked why I wasn’t at the tennis. “There isn’t any today,” I said. “It’s raining.” “Oh, it’s all outside,” she said, a bit surprised. “I didn’t know that.” She thought for a moment and then said, “U.S. Open! Of course.”
I eventually headed out to Flushing Meadows. The woman overseeing the tournament shuttles on 57th Street told me of the female player who, one year, came out and fumed because her ride hadn’t arrived. “Sweetheart,” the woman told her, “you’re in New York. Calm down. It’ll be here.”
I was the only passenger, and a bit of a letdown, for my driver, who had driven Andy Murray (“He asked me who my favorite players were.”), Gilles Muller (“He talked to me the whole time.”) and Mardy Fish, who, he said, “had a beautiful girlfriend – or wife.” “They all do,” I said. “That’s the way it should be,” he said.
Once at the center, writing at my work station, I heard a man say there was Chinese food over in the photographers’ lounge. “Is it somebody’s birthday?” a reporter asked. “No,” the man said, “We always get Chinese for the first rainout.”
Wednesday at 4:05 in Arthur Ashe Stadium the mini Zambonis appeared on the court, to loud applause. Moving in sync, they swept the court, then left to another round of applause.
The next morning, in the daily bulletin, I saw the vehicles referred to as Slambonis.
Federer spins his racket in his hands while crouching to return serve, and also, very rarely, in the middle of a point.
You know how, when you’re in a bar, even if you’re engaged in a conversation, your eyes are helplessly drawn to the TV in the corner? The same goes for players at press conferences. (Which is probably why the TV is usually turned off.)
A small crowd occupied the Grandstand Friday for the Fyrstenberg/Matkowski-Bopanna/Qureshi men’s doubles semifinal match, almost all of it sitting in the shade. Though a bare-chested septuagenarian sat in the sun. His U.S. Open T-shirt hung on the railing in front of him, along with a towel, which at a changeover he used to wipe his underarms. Then he put it back on the railing to dry.
Minutes after I picked up my ticket for the men’s semifinals (at this point even media members are assigned seats) someone asked me: “Are you going to go outside and sell it?” “I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said. “I’m from New York,” the man explained. “We learn that in the third grade.”
As I listened to the chair umpire in Arthur Ashe Stadium, it occurred to me that the two weeks of the U.S. Open must be the only time in New York City when someone asks people to shut up by saying “thank you.”