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As a reporter who covers tennis for The New York Occasions, I’m typically requested which of the 4 Grand Slam tournaments — the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open — is my favourite.
I admit I’m biased, as I’ve lived in New York most of my life. However my reply has by no means wavered: the U.S. Open.
I’ve been coming to the event since 1978; I used to be a 9-year-old tennis-head who grew up in Westchester County in the course of the American tennis increase. The event had simply moved from the West Facet Tennis Membership at Forest Hills to what’s now the Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Middle in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
I bear in mind scant particulars about that first event. My mother and father took my two brothers and me. We sat means up within the purple bleachers of Louis Armstrong Stadium, the venue’s principal area. It was scorching and breezy, because it typically is whenever you’re a stone’s throw from Flushing Bay. Roscoe Tanner was enjoying. He may serve the ball 150 miles an hour despite racket expertise that’s now thought of historic.
The best factor about that stadium, which was later renovated, after which torn down and changed, was that for those who climbed to the highest of the bleachers, you would lean over a railing and watch the motion on the Grandstand court docket about 150 ft beneath. It appeared extremely unsafe. However it was additionally superior in the best way that a lot of New York within the Seventies and ’80s was — it felt harmful and great all of sudden.
One yr, my brother and I snagged seats just a few rows up from the court docket on the Grandstand and watched Vitas Gerulaitis win an epic match in an early spherical. Gerulaitis, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1994, was one of many nice New Yorkers, a Lengthy Island boy with shoulder-length blond curly hair. The little bandbox of a stadium was teeming with followers screaming their lungs out for him.
Like Gerulaitis, John McEnroe, one other tennis nice, grew up enjoying on the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Lengthy Island. I knew individuals who knew them. An older cousin used to inform me tales of leaving Studio 54 at 2 a.m., simply as Gerulaitis and his posse, which generally included Bjorn Borg, have been coming into the membership. New York felt like the middle of the tennis universe.
In my 30s, I grew to become a sportswriter and finally a specialist who largely covers tennis and the Olympics. Most individuals suppose I’ve one of many world’s best jobs. They’re not unsuitable. I sometimes spend about three months a yr on the highway, protecting the most important tennis tournaments and a handful of different sporting occasions. The 2 weeks after I get to sleep in my very own mattress in Manhattan and canopy the U.S. Open are further particular.
All of the Grand Slams are nice in their very own methods, with many great folks, together with new and longtime volunteers, who make them attainable.
I’m unsure any nation’s followers relish sport as a lot because the Aussies. The French Open has these stunning purple clay courts. Wimbledon has the custom, however there’s additionally the Royal Field, the place princes and queens sit. However monarchies aren’t actually my factor.
The U.S. Open is how I feel tennis must be: welcoming, with restricted emphasis on staid decorum. The event is basically faraway from its status as an elitist sport for the wealthy.
We’ve Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, the Williams Sisters, Frances Tiafoe, Coco Gauff and lots of others to thank for that. It additionally helps that the nation’s signature tennis occasion occurs in a public park, reasonably than a personal membership.
The stadiums aren’t hallowed grounds however utilitarian concrete containers. Sure, there are some fancier, company enclaves and really dear cocktails, however there’s a lot concerning the house that alerts inclusion; the advanced is known as for King, a lady who proudly identifies as lesbian, and its principal stadium honors Ashe, a Black man and civil rights activist. Look across the grounds on a busy day and the place considerably resembles town that hosts it.
Shortly after the event ends, you’ll be able to reserve a time and play together with your buddies on those self same courts. I’ve hit loads of balls there. I’ve watched one among my children follow and play matches there. Strive doing that on the All England Membership.
This yr’s event is steaming towards the end. So most of the large names have performed deep into the event: Djokovic. Alcaraz. Gauff. I shall be within the decrease bowl, about 10 rows up from the court docket, for the boys’s and girls’s finals — two of my favourite days of the yr — although the opposite 12 days of the event are generally even higher.
Shortly after the event ends, I shall be shifting to The Athletic, the sports activities web site that The Occasions owns, which is able to take over the standard sports activities protection for the corporate this month.
I don’t know what number of years I’ve attended the Open since 1978. Most could be a really protected wager, together with in 2020, after New York had develop into a scorching spot for the coronavirus, after I was one among a tiny handful of journalists permitted on web site for the Open. It was like reporting from the floor of the moon.
Fortunately, at The Athletic, I’ll proceed to do what I do, together with, in fact, protecting these different Slams and the U.S. Open yearly, chasing the tales of agony and ecstasy that this stunning and merciless sport at all times produces.
Tennis, anybody?
