The first Thursday of the US Open
offered beautiful weather and a full day and evening of tennis. My evening would
have gone later, but ten sets played in Arthur Ashe Stadium pushed the start of
the night session back at least an hour and a half, adding thousands of people
milling around the grounds and making it impossible to get onto the smaller
field courts for the final matches of the day
session.
With reports that the US Open is selling
60,000 seats a day, and assuming that means 23,000 seats to Ashe multiplied by
two sessions, that leaves about 14,000 grounds passes. It’s great that so many
people are interested in and able to watch tennis in
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.
Grandstand: Robert Kendrick
(
By 10:40, when I entered the Grandstand,
the desirable seats in the shade were filling up. I managed to grab one in the
penultimate row and settled in for something of a throwback match: neither
player is afraid of the net, and Haas hits his backhand with one hand. On the
other hand, both players are hipsters — Haas at 31, Kendrick closing in on 30 — featuring the
backwards baseball caps so popular with the kids these
days.
Kendrick wore an elaborate bandage that went from just below his
left knee to wrap around his calf. He has a big serve, clearing 130 mph on
occasion, and likes to hit his forehand. Kendrick avoids hitting backhands, but
when they are inevitable he alternates a two-hander with topspin and the Mats
Wilander one-hander with slice.
The tone was set early, with Kendrick
fighting off five break points in the third game and two more in the fifth
before Haas was able to cash in. The break sufficed for Haas to serve out the
set, 6-4, though he did have to stave off two break points in his 4-3 game. In
addition, we all had questions about the Hawk-Eye replay technology in the final
game of the set. At 15-0, a Kendrick shot was called out. He challenged the
call, and it took a long time for the technology to kick in. When the simulated
replay was finally shown, the ball was rendered about a foot inside the court,
which no one, Kendrick included, would claim to be accurate. The point was
replayed, and Haas won it, serving out the set at love with an
ace.
Kendrick changed from a predominantly
red shirt to white for the second set. It didn’t help, as Haas
broke in the seventh game — the crucial seventh game, as the announcers like to
say — and Kendrick angrily spiked his racket to the court, dislodging the
vibration damper. As Haas tried to serve out the second set, he fell behind 0-30
and eventually faced two break points, but he climbed out of the hole and
concluded this set, too, with an ace.
In the third set, I counted five break
points that Kendrick saved. (For the match, Haas converted only 2 of 18
breakers, while Kendrick was 0 for 4.) The players went to a tiebreak, which
went as follows:
Final score: Haas d. Kendrick 6-4
6-4 7-6(3)
Grandstand: Caroline
Wozniacki (DEN) (9) v.
I stayed in my good seat for the second
match on the Grandstand. Wozniacki, 9th in the
world, is a prodigious groundstroker, particularly off the backhand side.
Martic, a qualifier, is listed at
5’11” and 139 pounds. I have to be careful how I say this and some other
comments below, because a friend has berated me for circulating too many
articles related to health care that talk about obesity: there is no way Martic
weights 139 pounds. She is Hantuchova-thin. For what it’s worth, the
pre-match photo of Martic shown on the scoreboard rendered her a brunette;
mirabile dictu, on court she was blond. A spectator surmised she had spent a lot of
time in the sun this summer.
Now for the second comment I must render
with care. Wozniacki wore a frilly tennis skirt that is part of adidas’s Stella
McCartney collection, the Dane having replaced Maria Kirilenko on this endorsement deal. The middle-aged women sitting near me were
discussing the outfit intently. One said at first that she did not like it, but
then said it was growing on her. She added, however, that the skirt makes one’s
posterior seem larger and thus, though Wozniacki
can carry it off, if Serena Williams were to wear this outfit, “it would be
alarming.” Hey, I’m just reporting here!
Ah, yes, the tennis. Martic makes her
life more complicated with a high ball toss, so that she does not strike her
serve at the apex of the toss. On second serves when break point rolls around,
that has to be difficult. Wozniacki’s backhand is so good that, in contrast to
today’s players who will backpedal halfway across the baseline to hit a
forehand, she will often go with the backhand on a ball hit up the middle.
Martic serves harder than Wozniacki, but Wozniacki probably does everything else
better.
Wozniacki broke for a 3-1 lead, saved
three break points to extend her lead to 4-1, and got to 5-1 when Martic
double-faulted at 15-40. I left after she closed out the set, 6-1. Wozniacki put
up a bagel in the second set to close it out.
Final Score: Wozniacki d. Martic
6-1 6-0
Armstrong: Kevin Kim
(
When I entered Armstrong, Kim — who is
not as physically imposing as Querrey but serves just about as hard — was
serving at 5-7 5-6. He held to force a tiebreak, which went as
follows:
I couldn’t find a seat in the shade, so
I moved along.
Final Score: Querrey d. Kim 7-5
6-7(6) 6-4 6-4
Court 11: Anastasia
Rodionova (AUS) v. Sabine Lisicki (GER) (23)
The strange events on Court 11 began for
me with the second match of the day. It was a play in three acts, and I arrived
at the conclusion of the first. In that first act, Rodionova, now playing for
Australia though born in Russia, extended to a surprising 6-3 3-0 lead. Lisicki
has been battling shoulder problems, but she was still a major favorite,
ranked 25th
in the world, while Rodionova, more a doubles specialist, is a qualifier
ranked 139th.
Rodionova wore a support on her left ankle, while Lisicki wore a
protective device on her left hand. Shortly after
my arrival, Lisicki turned up the heat, making the second act the polar opposite
of the first. From a 0-3 deficit in the second set, she won six straight games
to tie the match, and then she raced out to a 5-2 lead in the third. As things
got more and more dire for Rodionova, a fan shouted encouragement, often using
the terminology: “Anastasia, you’ve got it!” As Groucho Marx would say, “Who are
you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
In this case, the fan’s fantasy proved,
in the third act, reality-based. Lisicki had two match points while serving at
5-3 in the third. Rodionova saved both, one on a Lisicki double-fault, one of
ten on the day. Rodionova
eventually broke to get back to 4-5, held for 5-5, and broke again for 5-6.
Serving for the match, Rodionova reached ad in. She drew a short forehand, which
she gingerly put into the open court for the win. I couldn’t understand why she
pushed the ball so gently, till I saw that Lisicki, trying to change directions
from her forehand corner, had collapsed to the court in pain. Had Rodionova
missed the short forehand, it would have been deuce, but the match would have
been over anyway, because Lisicki was badly injured. She eventually left the court in a wheelchair, to generous applause from the
fans.
Stephanie Myles, covering the Open for
the Montreal Gazette, has criticized Rodionova as a
“certifiably crazy lady” who has “no clue,” because she did not assist Lisicki
and did participate in a post-match interview. I don’t know Rodionova’s
reputation on the tour, but I didn’t think her behavior was untoward. She walked
toward Lisicki to acknowledge her condition, but what could she really do for
her? An Australian report quoted Rodionova,
who still travels on a Russian passport:
“I was kind of
scared to come to her,” Rodionova said when asked about Lisicki’s fall. “I felt
really bad. I didn’t really know what to do, and that’s definitely not the way I
wanted to finish the match. I feel sorry for her. It’s sport, but I don’t want
anyone to be hurt. I hope she gets better and that it’s not a really bad
injury.”
That’s certainly the way it looked to
me, sitting right behind Court 11. The report further states that Lisicki broke
her ankle, whereas CBS says it was a sprain. Either way, it was a
horrific sight, and I don’t think anyone present, including Rodionova, wishes
Lisicki anything less than a full recovery.
Having seen Lisicki’s terrible injury, I
began to wonder why this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often, particularly
on hard courts. It renews my appreciation for Roger Federer’s movement, recently
analyzed in the New York Times and depicted in a
multimedia display. Federer’s
fluidity does not merely save him from wear on the joints and consequent injury,
but it also obviously separates him from most of his opponents and helps him win
matches.
Final Score: Rodionova d. Lisicki
6-3 3-6 7-5
Court 11: Robin Soderling
(SWE) (12) v. Marcel Granollers (ESP)
The next match featured the current
Roland Garros finalist, the man who turned Federer’s year around when he
defeated Rafael Nadal, and a player I’ve watched at the Open since he got
frustrated in junior play by Stéphane Bohli five days before
9/11. Before the match began, I previewed for young Cousin David, now a US Open
veteran, the big serve that Soderling would be throwing down. David was not too
impressed by the opening offering, which clocked in at 120 mph. The final two of
the first game were at 136 and 135, which I think got David’s
attention.
Granollers had other problems. He called
for a trainer, who worked on his lower back. Soderling sat impatiently, pumping
his legs like his French Open victim Nadal does on changeovers. Granollers
gamely continued, and was able to serve at 120 mph, but he could hardly move,
looking like an old man sending back soup in a deli. After Soderling got to 40-0 in the third game, Granollers had had
enough, and he retired.
Final Score: Soderling d.
Granollers 2-0 ret.
After the untimely end of Soderling v.
Granollers, there was a delay of over half an hour till the next match on Court
11. Cousin David and I took the opportunity to stroll the grounds, where I took
a picture of him standing with an image of Rod Laver.
It was one of my great thrills to shake Laver’s hand at the Open in 1999, when
he and a contingent of Aussies came to Court 11 to watch Wayne Arthurs play a
second round match against a young countryman
named Lleyton Hewitt. At the conclusion of the match, a leather-lunged fan
exhorted the crowd to salute the greatest player of all time (this was
pre-Federer), and we gave Laver a rousing ovation.
Now it is forty years since Laver won
his second Grand Slam, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame has an exhibit
at the Open with some memorabilia associated with that achievement, including
the spikes Laver wore on a wet court for his final
against Tony Roche and the rackets he used at the time. I recommend that
spectators at the Open take a moment to visit the Hall of Fame exhibit — or,
better yet, see the full collection at the Hall in
Court 11: Shahar Peer (ISR)
v. Carla Suarez Navarro (ESP)
When the players were introduced, Suarez
got some polite applause, and the stands erupted for Peer. This was essentially
a home match for her.
Peer has fallen from a
Peer broke serve twice for a 3-0 lead,
but Suarez retrieved one of the breaks just as the lights were coming on at 7:00
p.m. When Suarez held to draw within 3-2, it looked like it would become a tight
match. She was not to win another game. Perhaps the crusher for Suarez came when
Peer raced to a 15-40 lead on Suarez’s serve to open the second set. Suarez
recovered to deuce, but Peer got back to ad out, and then clinched the break at
the conclusion of a long rally. From there, it was off to the races, and Peer
finished the match in barely an hour.
I’ve described Court 11 as a graveyard.
While Peer’s win was a mild upset, that doesn’t fully explain the disappointment
for Suarez. The match was played on her 21st birthday. The good
news for Suarez is that she’s now eligible to drink in
Final Score: Peer d. Suarez Navarro
6-2 6-0
With the grounds flooded with fans, I
now caught a few snippets of matches, which I’ll mention
briefly.
First, I saw the final game of Novak Djokovic’s routine win over the big-serving
southpaw qualifier Carsten Ball in Armstrong. As
Djokovic prepared to serve out the match, a crackling noise emerged from the
speakers, and a photographer picked the wrong moment to scurry out of the pit,
onto the court, and back into the pit nearer the baseline. Djokovic was not
amused, but he closed out the match and then tossed his shirt into the stands along with the
traditional three autographed balls.
I caught a little bit of Mahesh Bhupathi
and Mark Knowles finishing up their match on Court 13
against James Cerretani and Lovro Zovko.
I saw the end of a super-tiebreak in
which Cara Black and Leander Paes, the second seeds, escaped match point to
defeat Patty Schnyder and Wesley Moodie on Court 8. Schnyder netted a very makeable volley on match
point for her team, and then Black and Paes ran the table.
Finally, I saw a couple of games on
Court 5 between Zi Yan and Mariusz Fystenberg and the all-Romanian team of Monica Niculescu and the
veteran Andrei Pavel. The Sino-Polish team eventually came back from a one-set
deficit to win in a super-tiebreak.
I wanted to try to get into Court 4 to
see the conclusion of the four-setter between Phillip
Kohlschreiber and Somdev Devvarman, but it was impossible to get in, so I left
the grounds at about 8:45 p.m.
This year, the USTA is offering free
streaming video of play on Ashe,
Armstrong, the Grandstand, and Courts 11 and 13. I doubt this will be free for
long —