US Open Report
Monday, September 6, 2010
Jerry Balsam
Trust Us, We’re
the Transit Authority
As is the practice with these
dispatches, my report is supplemented by photos, the full album of which may be
accessed by clicking here.
Italicized hyperlinks in the report refer to individual photos in my
album.
My last visit to this year’s US Open
took place on a beautiful Labor Day evening. The gates are supposed to open for
the night session at 6:00 p.m., but the long line did not start moving till
after 6:15, and it was about 6:30 by the time I was on the grounds. Fortunately,
Armstrong and the Grandstand were not full, so the tournament organizers allowed
holders of night tickets to watch the day matches
there.
Armstrong: Robin Söderling
(SWE) 5 v. Albert Montañés (ESP) (21)
My first stop was Armstrong, where the
big Swede, after losing the first set to probably the only player in the top
twenty-five I’d never seen, had taken the second and was preparing to serve for
the third. Montañés, closing in on 30, has played nine
career finals, all on clay, losing the first four and then winning the next
five. Like the two Spanish lefties I’d seen on Sunday, Montañés, a right-hander
with his baseball
cap on backwards, hits a one-handed backhand. With Söderling’s
heavy ball jumping above the Spaniard’s shoulders, Montañés often found himself
hitting the backhand as a semi-jump shot. It was not unlike what Nadal does to
Federer’s backhand. Söderling regularly punished the ball into the corners, and
it was all Montañés could do to stay in points.
Söderling served out the third set at 15
just after my arrival and then jumped to a 3-2 lead in the fourth set when he
cashed in his third break point of the game. Montañés made his last stand when
Söderling served at 4-3, scrambling back from 40-15 to deuce with effective
counterpunching, but the Swede took six of the next seven points to hold serve
and break again to close out the match. He is looking very
strong.
Final Score: Söderling d. Montañés 4-6 6-3 6-2
6-3
Grandstand: Bob Bryan/Mike
In retrospect, my next stop offered a
poor waiting-on-line/watching-tennis ratio. There was about a fifteen-minute
wait to get into the Grandstand. When I got in, the Bryan brothers were up a set and 4-3, preparing to
receive serve from the veteran Knowles, who had just turned 39. He opened with
two double faults and was broken at love, and then Bob
Bryan served out the match at love, so I saw a grand
total of eight points in this contest. All in all, not a great day for Mardy
Fish.
Final Score: Bryan/Bryan d.
Fish/Knowles 7-5 6-3
Grandstand: Liezel Huber/Bob Bryan
(
The schedule called for two mixed
doubles quarterfinals to start no earlier than 6:00 p.m. One involved Bob Bryan,
and the other included Mark Knowles, so I felt confident there would be a mixed
doubles match on the Grandstand after sufficient rest for Bryan and Knowles.
Sure enough, at about 8:15, the scoreboard announced that
Somewhat to my surprise, I saw on the US
Open iPhone app that the Knowles match would be on Court 11. I had thought that
the organizers would use Armstrong for one of the matches, but I suppose they
wanted to shut down that stadium for the night. (For the record, Knowles did
better in the mixed, as he and Anna-Lena Groenfeld knocked out the second-seeded
team of Cara Black and Leander Paes, 6-3 6-4.)
I saved a box seat in the Grandstand,
imagining that the place would fill up to some extent. I needn’t have been so
punctilious; at most, there were perhaps 200 fans watching the match, one of
whom was Wayne
Bryan (in a blue warm-up suit and white baseball cap), father of the
twins. It was worth getting up close to see this match, as four doubles
specialists in their thirties offered touch and strategy to spare. The net
players applied pressure on their opponents, stationing themselves toward the
middle of the court and threatening to poach. The women were not afraid to come
in, with Lisa Raymond almost always following her serve to
net and Liezel Huber occasionally doing so. I also
noticed things I had not seen before, such as the tattoo
above Raymond’s left ankle and Wesley
Moodie’s wedding band. Moodie is more than a head
taller than Raymond, while Bryan
and Huber are closer in height.
A predominant strategy in the match was
to lob the woman, especially on return of serve when the man was serving.
Raymond did it twice, successfully both times, to help her team to 0-40 on
Huber was the first player to lose
serve, but Moodie was broken at love in the sixth game to level the match. When
Moodie served at 4-5, he got to 40-30, but no-ad is dicey: Raymond missed a
forehand volley to make it deuce, and then Moodie missed a forehand volley for
the break and the first set. (I should note that when no-ad scoring is used in
men’s doubles and women’s doubles on the regular tour — it is not used in these
events at the Grand Slams — the receiving team decides who will receive serve on
the deciding point. In mixed doubles, the no-ad rule is that the receiver on the
deciding point is of the same gender as the server, so you can’t have the
receivers deciding to have the man return the woman’s
serve.)
Moodie was broken yet again in the
second game of the second set, but he and Raymond stayed alive by breaking Huber
in the seventh game. In the eleventh game, Huber fell from 40-0 to deuce, but
she held serve when
This was perhaps my favorite match of
the tournament, as I sat right behind the court and enjoyed the artistry of
players who do more than pound groundstrokes. The fans who were wandering the
grounds would have enjoyed this contest.
Final Score: Huber/Bryan d.
Raymond/Moodie 6-4 7-6(3)
Ashe: Jürgen Melzer (AUT)
(13) v. Roger Federer (SUI) (2)
At the conclusion of my fourth and final
visit to the Open this year, I made my first foray into the seats at Ashe (nosebleed
seats, at that). When I arrived, Roger
Federer was up two sets, but Jürgen
Melzer had just broken serve to start the
third.
Federer quickly jumped to 0-40 on
Melzer’s first service game and broke back on his second chance, putting away a
weak drop shot with his backhand. But Federer struggled on serve as the set went
on. In the long fifth game, he saved four break points, and three more in the
seventh. Along the way, he seized the decisive break in the sixth game, hitting
a crosscourt backhand volley winner at deuce and then taking the game when
Melzer netted a forehand volley. Federer did not falter when he served out the
match, going up 40-0 and then head-faking Melzer before passing him with a
forehand into the open court.
Final Score: Federer d. Melzer 6-3 7-6(4)
6-3
Someday, Federer’s run of winning major
titles will end. Perhaps it already has, and there is no shame in winning
sixteen. I’ve made the mistake of writing him off before, and I’m wary of doing
so again. Still, on current form, I think Söderling has a real chance against
Federer in the quarterfinals. He is hitting a very big ball, and he now has the
experience of beating the great man in a Slam. If Federer is to get by
Söderling, I think it will be with guile. Söderling is not great at pressing the
advantages provided by his big serve and groundstrokes, and he may not be able
to pound Federer into submission without venturing successfully into midcourt
and the forecourt. But Rafa Nadal’s chances to get to the final have to look
good now that Andy Murray (whom I constantly pick to win majors, and who
constantly fails to do so) is out of the tournament, and I think he would be a
strong favorite if the dream final with Federer were to
materialize.
As I say good-bye to this year’s US
Open, I regret that I did not have an opportunity to watch any juniors. In past
years, I’ve seen the junior versions of Söderling, Richard Gasquet, Marcos
Baghdatis, and Gaël Monfils, among others. Söderling was out of sorts, and he
got tuned by the future journeyman Stéphane
Bohli. When I saw the widely hyped Gasquet, I knew he
would be good, but little did I know that his opponent that day would also
become a top twenty player. That was John Isner. Next year, I hope to see some
more future stars.
The fans streaming to the subway after
Federer’s win were offered a speedy 7 train to