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As a reporter who covers tennis for The New York Times, I’m usually 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. But my reply has by no means wavered: the U.S. Open.
I’ve been coming to the match since 1978; I used to be a 9-year-old tennis-head who grew up in Westchester County through the American tennis increase. The match had simply moved from the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills to what’s now the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
I keep in mind scant particulars about that first match. My mother and father took my two brothers and me. We sat method up within the purple bleachers of Louis Armstrong Stadium, the venue’s important area. It was sizzling and breezy, because it usually is once you’re a stone’s throw from Flushing Bay. Roscoe Tanner was taking part in. He may serve the ball 150 miles an hour regardless of racket expertise that’s now thought-about historic.
The coolest factor about that stadium, which was later renovated, after which torn down and changed, was that in case you climbed to the highest of the bleachers, you may lean over a railing and watch the motion on the Grandstand courtroom about 150 ft under. It appeared extremely unsafe. But it was additionally superior in the way in which that a lot of New York within the Seventies and ’80s was — it felt harmful and fantastic unexpectedly.
One 12 months, my brother and I snagged seats a number of rows up from the courtroom 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 Long 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 taking part in on the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long 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, had been getting into the membership. New York felt like the middle of the tennis universe.
In my 30s, I turned a sportswriter and finally a specialist who principally covers tennis and the Olympics. Most folks suppose I’ve one of many world’s best jobs. They’re not flawed. I sometimes spend about three months a 12 months on the highway, masking the key tennis tournaments and a handful of different sporting occasions. The two weeks after I get to sleep in my very own mattress in Manhattan and canopy the U.S. Open are further particular.
All the Grand Slams are nice in their very own methods, with many fantastic folks, together with new and longtime volunteers, who make them potential.
I’m undecided any nation’s followers relish sport as a lot because the Aussies. The French Open has these lovely purple clay courts. Wimbledon has the custom, however there may be additionally the Royal Box, the place princes and queens sit. But monarchies aren’t actually my factor.
The U.S. Open is how I believe tennis needs to be: welcoming, with restricted emphasis on staid decorum. The match is basically faraway from its fame as an elitist sport for the wealthy.
We have 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 non-public membership.
The stadiums aren’t hallowed grounds however utilitarian concrete bins. Yes, there are some fancier, company enclaves and really expensive cocktails, however there’s a lot in regards to the house that alerts inclusion; the advanced is known as for King, a girl who proudly identifies as lesbian, and its important stadium honors Ashe, a Black man and civil rights activist. Look across the grounds on a busy day and the place considerably resembles the town that hosts it.
Shortly after the match ends, you’ll be able to reserve a time and play along with your buddies on those self same courts. I’ve hit loads of balls there. I’ve watched one in every of my children apply and play matches there. Try doing that on the All England Club.
This 12 months’s match is steaming towards the end. So most of the huge names have performed deep into the match: Djokovic. Alcaraz. Gauff. I can be within the decrease bowl, about 10 rows up from the courtroom, for the lads’s and ladies’s finals — two of my favourite days of the 12 months — although the opposite 12 days of the match are generally even higher.
Shortly after the match ends, I can be shifting to The Athletic, the sports activities web site that The Times owns, which is able to take over the normal sports activities protection for the corporate this month.
I don’t know what number of years I’ve attended the Open since 1978. Most can be a really protected wager, together with in 2020, after New York had grow to be a sizzling spot for the coronavirus, after I was one in every of a tiny handful of journalists permitted on website for the Open. It was like reporting from the floor of the moon.
Thankfully, at The Athletic, I’ll proceed to do what I do, together with, after all, masking these different Slams and the U.S. Open yearly, chasing the tales of agony and ecstasy that this lovely and merciless sport at all times produces.
Tennis, anybody?
Source: www.nytimes.com