by Jerry Balsam
I. August 28, 2002
One of my colleagues was offered two tickets to the Wednesday, August 28 night session, in one of the luxury suites that is very comfortable for the occupants and that make Arthur Ashe Stadium unappealing for everybody else. Not being interested in tennis and knowing I am, he graciously turned the tickets over to me.
I hustled out to Flushing Meadow to catch some of the day session before the rain. I arrived at around 6:00 and entered through the President's Gate, where I was preceded by the last mayor of New York City before Michael Bloomberg to set foot in the facility, an old-looking David Dinkins.
After a short visit to the luxury suite, I hit the grounds. I saw a little bit of Wayne Arthurs and Andrew Kratzmann defeating Matias Boeker and Robby Ginepri on Court 7. This is the third time I've seen the lugubrious looking Mr. Arthurs at the Open; I've seen him shock Guga Kuerten and lose to a not-yet-notorious Lleyton Hewitt. (The Arthurs-Hewitt match, a four-setter on Court 11 in the second round in 1999, concluded with a leather-lunged fan calling out a tribute to the great Rod Laver, who was in attendance with a whole bunch of Aussies. Everyone applauded and I got to shake the Rocket's hand on the way out. It was a goosebump moment.)
Then I saw a little bit of Chanda Rubin and the redoubtable Natasha Zvereva in their win over a Japanese team, Ai Sugiyama and Miho Saeki. I got a nice shot of Rubin smiting a forehand. (See below for more information on photographs.)
I found a match that was worth a long look: the twelfth-seeded team of Sjeng Schalken and Julien Boutter against Grant Silcock and Denis Golovanov. A little background is necessary. You may recall my following the travails of Michael Joyce, a former top 100 player whose mother and uncle are friends of mine. As his 30th birthday closes in, Michael's been playing the Challenger circuit, with not such great results of late. He's been doing better in doubles, however, and his partner for the most part has been Golovanov, a tall, thin Russian lefty with a McEnroe-like stance when he serves to the deuce court, a McEnroe-like disposition (on occasion), and a two-handed backhand (on occasion, it being doubles, where a good percentage of the few backhands Golovanov hit were one-handed slices). Michael had hoped to get a wild card to play doubles at the Open, but it was not to be. Golovanov's doubles ranking was good enough to make the doubles draw; like Michael, however, he lost in the singles qualifying.
I arrived early in the third set of the match. Schalken, as many of you know, is a pretty darned good singles player, coming very close to beating Hewitt at Wimbledon this year (and eventually making the semifinals in this event). What I didn't appreciate till he walked past me after the match is how tall he is. He's listed at 6'3", but I think that's an understatement. Boutter is a big server who muttered to himself in French when things didn't quite go his way. And they didn't always go his way, because at 2-2 in the third set, Golovanov and the Australian Silcock broke serve.
Boutter and Schalken immediately broke back for 3-3. Golovanov, serving at 3-4, dug out of a 0-40 hole and a fourth break point after deuce to hold for 4-4. Boutter and Schalken were holding serve routinely by now, and it was Silcock's turn to serve at 4-5. He went up 40-15 and served to Schalken's forehand. Schalken, who seemed in a foul mood, cranked the return as hard as he could hit it. The ball streaked by Golovanov in the alley for a clean winner, so it was 40-30. After Boutter returned the next serve, Schalken executed a clever poach to get to deuce. Boutter hit a winner to bring his team to match point. Silcock missed his first serve, and the second ball was short. Boutter crushed it at Golovanov, who volleyed into the net, and the match was suddenly over.
Golovanov couldn't have been too happy, but I took my chances and stopped him for a second as he left the court. I told him I'm friends with Michael Joyce's mother and asked him to pose for a photo. Remarkably, he did so, and did not swing his racquet at my head. (The week after the Open, Golovanov played doubles in Tashkent with Marat Safin. They made the semifinals, where they lost in a third-set tiebreak.)
After this, I caught a little bit of Simon Aspelin and the veteran Andrei Olohovskiy in their 6-3 6-2 disposal of Neville Godwin and Tommy Shimada. When serving, both teams used the I formation liberally.
While all this was going on, huge roars and Spanish chants could be heard from Court 10, where Fabiola Zuluaga of Colombia was playing a second-round match against Russia's Tatiana Panova, the 22d seed. That match had to be abandoned in the third set when the rain came; notwithstanding the passionate Zuluaga fans, Panova eventually came through on Thursday, 5-7 7-5 6-4.
I returned to the luxury suite where I socialized with the business associates who were hosting us and waited through a rain delay. Though Lindsay Davenport's match against Petra Mandula was substantially delayed, the 7:00 p.m. match that I had wanted to see on the Grandstand apparently went on. This was possible because at this point the rain was a steady mist; it was only later at night that play became untenable. Thus, I missed seeing Amir Hadad of Israel and Aisam Ul-haq Qureshi of Pakistan flouting Muslim Correctness and thrashing Mariano Hood and Sebastian Prieto of Argentina, 6-4 6-2. For their efforts, Hadad and Qureshi were depicted on page one of the next day's New York Times, above the fold.
Later, I went out to Court 11 to see the top doubles team in the world, Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor, against the Spaniards Alex Lopez Moron and Juan Ignacio Carrasco. Remarkably, the Spanish team had taken the first set in a tiebreak. I have never seen a men's doubles player stay on the baseline after hitting a second serve, let alone a first serve. Yet this is what Lopez Moron did, consistently. How in the world did his team take a set off the top seeds? By the time I arrived, Knowles and Nestor had turned the corner and won the second set. They were up 1-0 in the third when the rain became too strong to continue. (Thursday's action was confined to singles, because of the rain, so Knowles and Nestor had to take care of business on Friday.) I had my hopes that play would start again, so I returned to the suite. There, I enjoyed Ben & Jerry's ice cream and comfortable surroundings, but no more tennis.
Play never did get going again, which means that Lindsay Davenport cost the USTA about half a million dollars. Unlike the other top women, who had breezed through some early matches, Davenport was in a bit of a tussle with Mandula, leading only 6-4 2-2. In other words, they had played 14 games, which would have been more than enough for the Williams sisters or Capriati. Indeed, when play resumed on Thursday, Davenport won four straight games and the match. Had Davenport been able to finish on Wednesday evening, the USTA would not owe rain checks to next year's tournament. Assuming that 17,000 or 18,000 seats were sold at an average price of about $30, that's a half-million-dollar hit for the USTA.
You can see some of the photos I snapped on August 28 at:
http://www.tennis-ontheline.com/02usojb2.htm
II. September 4, 2002
My second visit to the Open was for the day session on Wednesday, September 4. I saw: one of the world's best doubles players lose twice; not a single ball struck in the monstrous Arthur Ashe Stadium; and a potential superstar chop down a stork. I heard a losing doubles team discuss what went wrong and a smart-aleck cheer in Hebrew. And I managed to avoid sunburn.
It was a sunny and warm day. I've learned to wear long sleeves for US Open day sessions and to seek out a seat in the shade. I began the day on the Grandstand, which is, along with Louis Armstrong Stadium, the best place to watch a match at the National Tennis Center. Unlike Armstrong, the Grandstand has no backs on its seats, but that was no problem: I got a seat in the top row behind the court. Thus, I was able to lean back against the wall, and I was in the shade.
The attraction on this court was Richard Gasquet, a 16-year-old French phenom who is already ranked No. 174 in the world. He was playing a second-round junior match against a qualifier from Greensboro, North Carolina, the stork-like John Isner. Isner is listed at 6'5", and I'd be surprised if he weighed much more than 140 pounds, if that. Not surprisingly, Isner has the bigger serve of the two, but Gasquet can crank the serve when he wants to. (He seems not to have a twist serve yet, however.) What's more, he seems to get to every ball, and he has classically smooth strokes on both wings, including a one-handed backhand. Isner has two idiosyncrasies. First, he wore "peds" in lieu of socks. I can't imagine that this goes down all too well in the Tarheel State, but who knows what the kids today are up to? Second, as he prepares to serve, he begins his bouncing routine by sending the ball between his legs from behind. That is followed by a couple of bounces in the usual manner, and then sometimes a repetition of the whole routine. It gets old fast. Gasquet limits his avant-garde statements to the backward baseball cap. He also went through Isner 6-2 6-4 and, as they say, the match wasn't as close as the score might indicate.
I had a nosebleed seat in Arthur Ashe, but I figured I'd pay a visit to see Todd Woodbridge and Jonas Bjorkman play doubles. By the time I arrived, they had taken care of business, so I returned to the grounds, never to return.
I then watched a very little bit of two more junior matches, in which Laurent Recourdec defeated Chris Kwon, 6-3 6-2, and Todd Reid bested Euisik Jong, 6-1 6-4. Jong, like me, is a lefty who wears glasses on the court. The similarities end there.
Afterwards, I stayed a few minutes to watch Carly Gullickson conclude the first set of her upset of the 13th seed, Anna Bastrikova, in the girls' singles. Gullickson's father, Bill, was a major league pitcher. She is from Brentwood, Tennessee, will be 16 in November, and is surprisingly chunky for a tennis player. She got herself going by talking to herself, addressing herself as "Carly."
I moved on to Court 13, where I caught a little bit of Marko Baghdatis, the fifth seed from Cyprus, winning a boys' singles match against the American Scoville Jenkins. Baghdatis, who is working on an incipient beard, eventually made the final, where, you may not be shocked to learn, Gasquet handled him, 7-5 6-2. (Gasquet, however, faced two match points when he beat the Aussie Ryan Henry in the semis.)
I then spent a while watching Dudi Sela of Israel, the 11th seed in the boys' singles, finish off the first set against Togo's Komlavi Loglo in a tiebreak. Sela's older brother, Ofer, had a mediocre career; Dudi, however, may be Top 100 material. Sela went on to win the match and made it as far as the quarterfinals, where he ran into the Gasquet buzzsaw. After a good shot, one of Sela's supporters shouted: "Yofi, Dudi; kadima, Sela!" (Well done, Dudi; let's go, Sela).
I headed to Court 14 and saw a bit of the match between Elise Tamaela of the Netherlands and Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany, the seventh seed in the girls' singles. Tamaela, a lefty, won the first set 6-3, but Groenefeld came back, 6-3 6-2.
On Court 7, I saw Robin Soderling of Sweden take apart Jordan Kanev of Bulgaria. Soderling, the second seed in the boys' singles, was number 227 in the world before the Open. I saw him lose in the junior event last year. He reminds me of his countryman Thomas Enqvist: big serve, heavy groundstrokes, utterly clueless in the forecourt. Soderling qualified for the men's singles this year and even made the second round, where he took Marcelo Rios to four sets. I saw match point on television. Not surprisingly, the match ended with Soderling butchering a volley. (In the boys' singles, he lost to Baghdatis in two tiebreaks in the semifinals.) The problem is simple. Soderling can try to diversify his game, but that means he will go backwards before he progresses. Or he can stick with what he does and settle for becoming a top 100 player. Considering that his success in the main draw catapulted him to No. 184 in the world, you can see how it would be difficult for him to take a step back and try to improve his game. By the way, much like the top players on the men's tour, neither Soderling nor Gasquet played the boys' doubles. How will these guys learn to volley if they refuse to play doubles?
My next stop, after a short visit to the delightfully air-conditioned exhibit from the Tennis Hall of Fame, was Armstrong, where the Bryan twins took on the top-seeded team of Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor in the men's doubles quarterfinals. (If you ever have a chance to visit the Hall of Fame, in Newport, I recommend it.) The Bryan twins gave singles a go but have settled back into doubles. Mike, the righty, is mired at number 455 in the singles rankings; Bob, the lefty, is at number 237. I suspect the difference in their rankings has a lot to do with the difference in their serves: Mike serves in the low 100s, while Bob regularly breaks 125 mph and in this match got as high as 133 mph. When I was a lad, one was taught to serve at three-quarters speed in doubles. That theory (perhaps along with doubles as an art form) is on the back burner now.
Knowles and Nestor wore black shoes and socks. Is this some sort of intimidation attempt, or do they simply wish to emulate Andre Agassi? They committed some bad errors to be broken at 2-3 in the first set, and the Bryans took the set 6-3. In the second set, Bob Bryan seemed to have a routine service game at 4-5. He was up 40-15, but then Knowles hit a net cord winner and Nestor hit a screaming return of serve crosscourt for deuce. Knowles and Nestor won a long rally, and suddenly they had set point; what's more, Nestor had a look at a second serve. He returned it long, and the danger was past. The teams went to a tiebreak, where Knowles and Nestor recovered from a mini-break. Knowles, serving at 5-6, missed the third volley in a long point, and it was over.
Next up was Court 6, where a 15-year-old Floridian, Jennifer Heinser, was overmatched in the girls' singles against the Slovak Jarmila Gajdosova. Gajdosova got some encouragement from her countrywoman Kristina Czafikova, who sat down next to me. I know it was Czafikova, who was seeded eighth in the girls' doubles, only because I saw her identity badge. Czafikova had a tattoo above her left ankle. Kids these days!
I walked by Court 10 long enough to snap some photos of Jaime Fillol and Tom Gorman and their opponents, Tom Okker and Ilie Nastase. Nastase, who would definitely have a tattoo or six if he were younger, affected the youth look with a backwards baseball cap.
Over on Court 11, Corina Morariu and Kimberly Po-Messerli were losing to Cara Black and Elena Likhovtseva, the third-seeded team in women's doubles. You might recall the none-too-competent Po-Messerli from my report last year, when she partnered the retiring Nathalie Tauziat. It was good to see Morariu, a leukemia survivor, back on the court, and she had a full head of curly hair. Meanwhile, the old-timers Nastase and Okker won their first set, 7-5, and none of the players realized that there was to be a stoppage of play. The rule mandating a stoppage at the end of each set, regardless of whether it consists of an even or odd number of games, was instituted long after these fellows reached their dotage. After I left, Fillol and Gorman came back to win, running through the second set 6-1 and then winning a "match tiebreak," 10-7. The match tiebreak is used among the old-timers as well as in the mixed doubles (and in some men's doubles events during the year). If the first two sets are split, there is a tiebreak in which the winning team needs 10 points rather than the usual seven, though still by a two-point margin. I had moved on by the time this tiebreak was played, so I can't report whether Nastase threw anything or cursed when he lost.
I returned to Court 18, where I had seen Dudi Sela play singles. Now, he was playing doubles with Michael Ryderstedt, a tall lefty from Sweden whom Sela had defeated in the first round of the singles. Their opponents were the Americans Ricardo Gonzalez and Andre Iriate. I found a strategic spot in the shadow of a light pole and moved as the shade moved. Sela is short but serves pretty well and has a classic one-handed backhand. Ryderstedt has a big serve and uses two hands on the backhand. They seemed to be having a grand old time, eschewing the grim game faces one usually sees. Sela and Ryderstedt were up a break at 5-4, but Sela was having trouble serving out the set. Before his fourth set point, an Israeli shouted: "Kadima, Sela; achshav, lo machar" (Let's go, Sela; now, not tomorrow). That seemed to do the trick: his team won the point and then breezed through the second set, 6-2. (They ultimately made the semifinals of the boys' doubles.) After their win, Sela and Ryderstedt stayed on court to practice some more.
While Sela and Ryderstedt were finishing off their match, Lina Stanciute of Lithuania and Marina Tavares of Brazil were administering a girls' doubles whupping on Court 17 to Mary Gambale and Michelle Mitchell of the US. I watched a little over my shoulder and saw Stanciute/Tavarese move to match point at 6-0 5-0. The Americans fought off the match point and eventually lost 6-0 6-3, making the score line a little more respectable for their families and friends.
My last stop of the day was Armstrong, for a mixed doubles quarterfinal between Elena Bovina and Mark Knowles, seeded eighth, and Els Callens and Robbie Koenig. There was nary an American on the court (the players are from Russia, the Bahamas, Belgium, and South Africa, respectively), but the fans eventually filed into Armstrong as the sun fell out of view and the day cooled off.
Bovina, 19, had her coming-out party at this year's Open. In the second round of the singles, she ran through the fifth seed, Jelena Dokic, 6-3 6-2, and she eventually made the quarterfinals, where she took a set off Lindsay Davenport before being steamrolled. She is 6'2" tall and arguably the thinking man's Kournikova (a position formerly occupied by Elena Dementieva). This was a rare mixed doubles match, in that Bovina was about as tall as Knowles, and Callens towered over Koenig.
Callens and Koenig broke Bovina to take the first set, 6-3. In the first game of the second set, Knowles served an ace past Callens at 120 mph to win the opening game. Or did he? Koenig said the ball was wide; a long conclave followed in which all four players were on the same side of the net, and eventually the umpire ruled the serve a fault. Knowles, who seemed unamused, cracked a second serve at 117 mph for an ace and the game.
In the second game of the set, Knowles, no stranger to poaching, crossed in front of Bovina to hit a backhand lob volley for a winner and the break of serve. I captured this move in a photo:
A full selection of my September 4 photos is available at:
http://www.tennis-ontheline.com/02usoj22.htm
Bovina tended to stay back on her serve. Often, Knowles crouched in the middle of the court and then moved one way or the other as the returner hit the ball. Bovina and Knowles had their mojo working, and they raced through the set, 6-1. Had the match been played out in a third set, you'd have to give them an edge, but of course they went into a match tiebreak, and there anything can happen.
The players were on serve when Knowles served at match point down, 8-9. Koenig smacked the ball at Bovina, who ducked. The ball was out by inches, and it was 9-9. But the less impressive team of Callens and Koenig went on to win 12-10.
I could have stayed to watch some more juniors matches, but it was now about 7:40, and it had been a very long day. After I stopped in the men's room, I walked out of Armstrong and found myself right behind Bovina and Knowles as they conducted a walking post-mortem. Bovina observed: "I was staying back." I walked by and said: "Tough loss," to which Bovina assented. I asked if they'd mind a photo, and Bovina opted out, a request that didn't seem as surly as it sounds and that I respected. With just about every player on the women's tour having her own stalker these days, I can understand the reluctance.
Bovina had been seeded 14th in the women's doubles, but she and Daja Bedanova (whom I saw lose to Martina Hingis last year) fell in the first round. Thus, she was now out of the US Open, as was Knowles, who had lost in men's doubles and mixed doubles within a few hours. Bovina has many major tournaments in her future; for Knowles and Nestor, journeymen in their early thirties who found a niche in doubles, it really is September, figuratively as well as literally.
And what of the Bryan twins? They lost in the semifinals of the men's doubles, but they faced each other in the finals of the mixed. Mike Bryan and Lisa Raymond, an estimable doubles player in her own right, prevailed over Bob Bryan and Slovenia's Katarina Srebotnik, 7-6(9) 7-6(1). Oh, yeah: some dude named Sampras won the men's singles.