Yesterday Nick and I traveled to Queens to spend the day at the US Open to watch second-round singles and first-round doubles. We took public transportation – a NJ Transit train into Penn Station, then walked down to Hudson Yards to grab the 7 subway which took us to the front door of the National Tennis Center. It was a more pleasant way to get from northern New Jersey all the way to the other side of New York City, but it was also the only sane thing to do since the Mets were playing at home in a late afternoon game in Citi Field on the other side of the subway tracks from the Open.
I had followed the advice of several people who were seasoned Open-goers and got early round reserved seats courtside in the Grandstand Stadium. You get to sit ridiculously close to the action at a good price, see great tennis, and if you choose, your ticket enables you to sit in first-come first-serve seats in any stadium except Ashe. We wandered a little but honestly there was no need, we were ringside at three fantastic matches.
Our first was Croatian Borna Coric (ranked 29) vs the young American Jenson Brooksby (ranked 43). Brooksby is 6’4” and most of it is arms and legs. But he is unexpectedly quick and agile and his huge reach enabled him to cover the court and make surprisingly effective counter-punches. Brooksby won 6-4, 7-6, 6-1 but it was a lot closer than the score suggests. It periodically became a slugfest with rallies that lasted from 24 to 32 shots. The tournament’s blog said, “In a three-setter that lasted more than three hours, Brooksby snaps Cincy champ and No. 25 seed Coric’s seven-match winning streak. Last year, Brooksby reached Round 4 as a wild card. Can he go deeper this year?”
We saw a heroic effort by Alizé Cornet as she won a three-setter against Czech Katerina Siniakova. Before the final set started they were taking Cornet’s blood pressure, and she repeatedly sucked in extra air after rallies. But if she looked like she was about to collapse between points, during play she was all in. Cornet is competing in her 63rd consecutive Grand Slam main draw, making her the Iron Woman. In the process she defeated defending champion Emma Raducanu in the first round.
Our final match of the day was an intense doubles contest of Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula of the US vs Leylah Fernandez of Canada and Daria Saville of Australia. The contrast between the teams’ demeanors was striking, even before play began. Fernandez/Saville were smiling and laughing, relaxed and excited. Gauff/Pegula (ranked 1 and 6 in women’s doubles) had their game faces on, and Nick said Gauff looked like she already had a chip on her shoulder when she walked on the court. Stress can do that to you.
There’s huge pressure all the time on Gauff – she’s on the cover of the latest New York Times Magazine – but it’s interesting to compare her to to Fernandez, who was the Open runner-up last year. Gauff is 18 and ranked 12th in the world, surrounded by all this hype about being a prodigy and whether she can fulfill her promise. But Fernandez is just 19 herself and ranked 14th, but right now she’s free to work on fully developing her game outside of the microscope.
Fernandez/Saville went on to win what the tourney blogger called an “epic” match and a “nail-biter.” That’s accurate! It was a terrific battle which was standing room only, people circling the railings at the top of the stadium.
Afterwards Nick asked me how the experience was for me and I said that it oddly reminded me of something when I was young. Nick and I were courtside; just a few rows in front of us was where the player coaches and family sat, and we watched their interactions. It made me think about how intimate tennis can be. I told Nick about watching a singles match in the summer of 1973 at the Marion Cricket Club in Haverford which was hosting the Pennsylvania Lawn Tennis Championships, part of the Grand Prix of tennis in those days, before the ATP. I don’t remember who was playing, but I was sitting with a friend on the bleachers and along comes Tom Gorman, still in his playing whites. He sat near us and asked for an update on the match, he was interested in it.
At the time Gorman was 8th in the world. Earlier that year he beat Björn Borg in Stockholm, and reached the semifinals of the French Open by defeating (in succession!) Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, and Jan Kodeš. But pro tennis was not the huge draw it is now, and there I was, chatting with a future Davis Cup captain about a match we were both watching, sitting on makeshift bleachers near the grass courts of an incredibly snobby and expensive country club that neither of us could have afforded to be a member of, and that’s how it was then. It was that feeling of shared community that came back a bit during our final match of the day, sitting just a little behind Saville’s husband and brother, and Fernandez’s mother.
