US Open
Report
Wednesday,
August 31, 2011
Jerry
Balsam
Rules Are Made to Be
Broken
I
have a few rules for the first week of the US Open, which is the best time to be
at the tournament:
The first rule is a sad necessity: sad, because Arthur
Ashe was a great man; a necessity, because the cavernous stadium that bears his
name makes for bad viewing anywhere above the two tiers of luxury boxes. Why
watch a match in Ashe from bad seats when you can enjoy it with a great view
from the comfort of home?
The second rule is a tribute to my pale skin, which
doesn’t love the sun, let alone to my no-longer tender
years.
The third rule flows from the first: I’m not the only
spectator who eschews Ashe, and the show courts on the grounds can get crowded,
especially in light of the many patrons who buy grounds
passes.
The final rule seems to be the whole point of coming to
the Open.
As
will become apparent, it is not always a simple matter to follow all four rules.
When my 2011 visits to the US Open began on August 31, it looked like I had a
shot at my own version of the Grand Slam, but three of the four rules were to go
by the wayside by nighttime. I began the day on the Grandstand, where my uncle
and cousin had thoughtfully arrived quite early and saved me a seat in the shade
on the west side of the court. There, we would start our day with the sixth
seed, Robin Soderling, and his booming shots. Or not – moments before 11:00
o’clock, we heard an announcement that Soderling, who had been struggling with
an injured left wrist, had withdrawn from the event with an illness. So much
for rule 4.
One more word before getting to the action. This year,
I’ve treated myself to a DSLR camera. This has resulted in multi-megabyte photos
that are not so easy to upload to my traditional sites. So I’m trying something
new this time, uploading the photos in condensed form to Twitpic. You can see my
selection of photos from August 31 by clicking here.
They appear in reverse chronological order, so I recommend that you view them
from the bottom of the page up.
Grandstand:
Rogério Dutra da Silva (LL) (BRA) v. Louk Sorensen (Q)
(IRL)
In
Soderling’s stead, we got a 27-year-old lucky loser, the Brazilian Rogério Dutra da Silva, now ranked no. 114 after a career high of no. 111 earlier
this summer. And a lucky loser he was, as his opponent for his first match ever
at a major was the Irishman Louk Sorensen, ranked no. 618 and never higher than no. 213. At least
Sorensen had once won a match at a major: he got to the second round of the
Australian Open in 2010.
Soderling may have been a no-show, but at least we had
my favorite usher, whom I’m used to seeing on the Grandstand year-after-year, a
high-spirited and quick-moving gentleman with dreadlocks who hustles fans into
and out of the venue on change-overs and this year snapped a
photo of fans who wanted a souvenir to take home with
them.
Before opening the match on serve, Sorensen did some
exuberant jumps to get the juices flowing. He promptly double-faulted on the
first point, leading a wag in the stands to ask: “Aren’t they playing
first-ball-in?” It was all downhill from there in the first set, as Sorensen
could barely make a ball, while Dutra was flowing with a pretty one-handed
backhand and a an unusual service motion in which his left hand does not make
contact with the throat of the racquet during the
preparation.
For a fellow who had barely won a match on the main tour
and never appeared in a major, Dutra made himself right at home. He and Sorensen
toweled off after practically every point, even though it was not all that warm
or humid a day. When Dutra was finished with the towel, he would hand it to the
ballboy who had brought it to him, so long as the ballboy was nearby. If not, he
would drop it on the court and let the ballboy worry about it. My, my, we’re
feeling entitled, aren’t we? By contrast, Christina McHale, whom I was to see
later in the day, neatly folded her towel and placed it atop the nearest clock,
the one recording match time or the one showing service speed. Let this be a
lesson to all the kids out there.
At
any rate, having been fed a bagel in the first set, Sorensen seemed a different
player in the second, perhaps because he changed into a green
shirt. You can’t mess with your national colors! Sorensen got one
opening to break, and he took it, ripping a forehand down the line to go up 4-2,
and then serving out the set.
In
the third set, Dutra changed from a black shirt to white, which was not a bad
idea if he found it necessary to go to the towel after each point. Dutra crept
out of a 15-40 hole in the seventh game, after which Sorensen received an
ominous visit from the trainer. Though the trainer worked on Sorensen’s legs,
the player was shaking his arms between points after play resumed. His serve
suddenly was moving at less than three-quarter speed, but he was able to hold
for 4-4. It got tougher for Sorensen in his next service game. He fell behind
0-40 for triple set point, and drop his racquet while wincing in pain after
losing the third point of the game. He somehow got back to deuce, saving the
third of the break points with the first serve-and-volley foray of the match. At
this point, he was all-in: he needed to come in behind serve, because he could
not do the running necessary to patrol the baseline. He dropped two consecutive
points from deuce and thus the set. Serving at 0-1 30-30 in the fourth set, he
finally gave up.
By
making the second round, Dutra is assured $31,000 in prize money, or 13% of his career winnings before the tournament.
Illness and infirmity, as experienced by Soderling and Sorensen, had been good
indeed to Dutra.
Final Score:
Dutra da Silva d. Sorensen 6-0 3-6 6-4 1-0 ret.
Grandstand: Marion Bartoli (8) (FRA) v.
Christina McHale (
Marion
Bartoli is very talented: one doesn’t get to the top ten otherwise.
She’s also got more quirks than
By
contrast, McHale, a local product from
One might have expected order to be restored in the
second set, but McHale broke serve in the first game and began her run to the
finish line. In the second game, I saw something new. Bartoli pounded a short
ball and, while the point was still underway, exhorted herself: “Come on!” The
umpire stopped the point and awarded it to McHale. Aside from the strangeness of
Bartoli’s exclamation during a point, I wonder why she used English rather than
French. As the set went on, Bartoli increasingly urged herself on, pumping both
fists between points and telling herself to “come on.” It did not help. She fell
behind by two breaks of serve, got one back, and then lost another to trail 5-2.
McHale had blunted Bartoli’s power by getting everything back, occasionally
resorting to a rope-a-dope strategy of slicing soft floaters on the backhand
side, here using only one hand, before getting a ball she could rip. Bartoli had
run out of answers, and McHale made no mistake serving out the match, doing so
in style with an ace up the T on match point at 40-15.
Final Score: McHale d. Bartoli 7-6(2)
6-2
It
was now late enough in the day to leave my shaded spot in the Grandstand. First,
I went under the stadium and took a USTA survey on a computer installed for that
purpose. The Q&A made sense till the computer started asking questions about
why I was coming out to see the qualifying. I guess that was a sly reference to
the Dutra-Sorensen match.
Rule 3 became a problem after I left the Grandstand. I
tried to get onto Court 17 to see the
Court 6: Monica Niculescu (ROU)/Shahar Peer
(ISR) v. Iveta Benesova (CZE)/Barbora Zahlavova Strycova (CZE)
(9)
Shahar Peer is one of my favorites, and last year I
managed to retrieve a ball she hit over the fence in a doubles match. This year,
she and Monica Niculescu were down a break in the third set
when I arrived, facing off against a lefty-right Czech tandem. The southpaw, Iveta
Benesova, is the incumbent
I
did not see any tantrums, but I did see plenty of breaks of serve. Záhlavová
Strycová was the first to crack, failing to hold with a 4-3 lead. Niculescu was
next: on break point, Peer led a Záhlavová Strycová return sail by her, and it
hit the line. This left Benesova to serve for the match, but she was broken at
love. Peer served at 5-5, and she was broken in a multi-deuce game. The next
time around, Záhlavová Strycová was able to hold serve, closing out the
match.
Final Score: Benesova/Zahlavova Strycova d.
Niculescu/Peer 5-7 6-4 7-5
I
decided to stay on Court 6, because I wanted my first look at Grigor
Dimitrov. Maybe he won’t live up to the nickname “Baby Federer”; indeed, odds must be that he won’t. But
if the comparison can be made, there must be something to
see.
Court 6: Grigor Dimitrov (BUL)/Dmitry
Tursunov (RUS) v. Eric Butorac (
I
always have trouble remembering what the abbreviation “AHO” that comes after
Rojer’s name means. For those scoring at home, the answer is Netherlands Antilles. Rojer has been at it at a while:
he turned 30 last week. He has never played a singles match in a Slam, but he’s
been in all the Slam doubles draws since Roland Garros in 2009, and he’s made a
bit over $600,000 in his career. Also 30, the left-handed Butorac is similarly situated: never in a Grand Slam
singles draw (indeed, he barely made the top thousand in singles at his peak, in
2006), but regularly playing on the doubles circuit, and making over $750,000
over the years. How much Butorac and Rojer got to keep of those winnings after
expenses is quite another story.
By
contrast, Dimitrov, at 20, has already been ranked as high as no.
52 in singles, has made nearly half a million dollars on tour, and will surely
cash quite a few decent paychecks over the next decade. Tursunov, 28 and a Russian/California surfer dude, has
made the top 20 and won nearly $4 million in prize money, twice making the round
of 16 at
To
make things more interesting, Butorac and Rojer take the unusual, but not
unheard-of, tack for a lefty-righty tandem of keeping their forehands in the
middle when receiving serve. Thus, the left-handed Butorac played the deuce
court and the right-handed Rojer the ad court. On their service
games, they played a fair amount of I-formation, with the net player crouching
near the net, on the center line, supporting himself with his non-racquet hand
resting on the court. The one departure from standard doubles procedure came in
Tursunov’s service games: he almost always stayed back on his serve, except when
he got a floating return that he could crush with a swinging
volley.
I
find it difficult to assess which prospects will turn into great players. It’s
hard enough to do under the best of circumstances and more difficult now that
everyone has solid strokes. In the old days, you might see a player who could
hardly serve or make a backhand passing shot, and you knew he would have
problems climbing through the ranks. Now, they all look good, and the questions
are how consistently they can produce great shots and how well they can handle
pressure. My assessment of Dimitrov – on a doubles court, to be sure, where he
will not be making his living – is that he obviously has talent. He strikes his
one-handed backhand with an easy motion, sometimes resulting in blazing winners.
His service motion is fluid, even with a straight arm as he draws back the
racquet, and he is not afraid of the net, though he did butcher some volleys.
Based solely on the numbers, Dimitrov is already a world-class player: if you’ve
been on the cusp of the top fifty at age 20, it’s likely that you’ll later see
the top twenty. Whether he’s got the goods to go top ten or top five is
anybody’s guess, but I don’t think the answer is knowable other than in
retrospect.
The first set went smoothly for the servers, with nary a
break point. In the tiebreak, a late out call on a Tursunov volley put his team
down a mini-break, to his substantial consternation, but a Dimitrov winner
returning serve off his backhand evened the score. Rojer had been serving with
the sun at his back. Now, serving for the first time from the other end, he
tossed in consecutive double faults at 3-4, giving set point to the opposition.
Dimitrov served an ace to close out the tiebreak, 7-3.
The turning point of the match came in the third game of
the second set, with Dimitrov serving. At 30-30, he could not track down a lob
and then double-faulted for the break. The next time he served, he badly missed
an overhead and, seemingly peeved, tossed in consecutive double faults, refusing
to temporize on second serve. After that, he whacked a ball out of the court and
drew a warning from the chair. Rojer served out the set, 6-2. In the third set,
it was off to the races, as the doubles specialists, granted new life,
registered a bagel against the now-uninterested singles
stars.
Final Score: Butorac/Rojer d.
Dimitrov/Tursunov 6-7(3) 6-2 6-0
Court 8: Arnaud Clément (FRA)/Lukas Dlouhy
(CZE) v. David Marrero (ESP)/Andreas Seppi (ITA)
I
slid over to Court 8 to watch the French veteran Clément, an Australian finalist and top ten player a
decade ago, and the doubles specialist Dlouhy, who has
won the US Open and Roland Garros in doubles and lost each of those
finals twice, face off against Marrero, 31 and no longer bearing a singles ranking,
and Seppi, still hovering outside the top 50. It is worth
remembering that Clément was not merely a talented singles player: he
has won the Wimbledon doubles and was runner-up in
When I arrived at Court 8,
In
the second set, the server sometimes had to scramble out of trouble, but there
were no breaks of serve. With Dlouhy serving at 4-4 in the tiebreak, Clément
missed a forehand volley.
Final Score: Marrero/Seppi d. Clément/Dlouhy
6-4 7-6(7)
My
US Open rules having fallen one by one, it was only a matter of time till a
friend called to report having an extra ticket for the night session. For
reasons that will become apparent, we’ll call my friend Max, a gender-neutral
name. Max is not a tennis fan but had to use the ticket in order to satisfy a
social obligation. I suggested to Max that this could become a Curb Your Enthusiasm storyline. So we went to Ashe
unenthusiastically: Max not caring for tennis, and I not caring for
long-distance viewing of players I can see on television, especially when one of
those players is the hard-to-watch Andy
Roddick. We stayed for a very little bit of Roddick’s match against
the 33-year-old journeyman Michael Russell, and off we went at about 9:00 p.m.,
well before Roddick closed out a four-set victory, to say nothing of the Maria
Sharapova shriekathon that followed. (Well, it couldn’t have been
much of a shriekathon, as Masha prevailed quickly, 1 and
1.)
Notwithstanding the serial violation of my rules, I am
pleased to say that I managed to stay out of the sun for almost the entire day,
thereby scoring a big fat 25 on my exam. I shall try to improve next
week.