NEW YORK—This morning, on the platform of the No. 7 train at Flushing Meadows, I saw two people who appeared to be waiting anxiously to meet someone. When they finally saw him, all three began to clap, happily and rapidly, in celebration. It sounded like a tiny pep rally. And why not? Their day at the Open was here.
And a beautiful day it was: Warm but not humid, the sky a hard, cloudless blue. By noon, the grounds already felt heavily crowded, and there were titanic lines to get into matches featuring Brian Baker and Lleyton Hewitt. All of which made me hustle a little faster out to Court 8, on the far side of the site. In my imagination, I pictured this small space overflowing with hungry fans bent on seeing what, to my mind, was clearly the highlight of the entire first round: Grigor Dimitrov vs. Benoit Paire.
Apparently, though, my Twitterverse, which had been chattering about this match-up of flashy, frustrating, utterly unpredictable talents for the last five days, is not the same as the universe at large. It turned out that not all that many real live humans in New York seemed to be interested in watching the world No. 49, from France, take on the world No. 58, from Bulgaria—half the crowd may have been tennis bloggers. I took my seat in a sparsely populated section of the bleachers, sat back, and prepared to enjoy some high-wire, high-strung tennis.
Those few who joined me seemed equally enthusiastic. At the top of the stands a group of men wore shirts with the colors of the French flag on them. It was fun to hear their cries of “magnifique!” and “superbe!” ring out in the Queens air. But the Frenchman also had his local supporters. “That’s it, Benny!” they cried after his winners.
Near me were two groups of Dimitrov fans. The first opted, in classic American fashion, to help him out with some practical advice.
“Come on, Grigs,” one of them moaned after Dimitrov drilled a forehand into the net. “You need more net clearance.”
Grigor’s other boosters, two men behind me who were constantly whispering to each other, couldn’t seem to decide on the best way to cheer for him.
“Let’s yell G-Force after this point,” one of them urged. His friend was non-committal.
When Dimitrov won the next point, the first guy hollered, “G-Force!” His friend didn’t join him.
“G-Force is stupid,” he muttered.
However the crowd felt about it, Dimitrov vs. Paire had no long-term significance, or any possible bearing on the outcome of the tournament. But it promised a little bit of everything—the good, the bad, the brilliant, the cool and the uncool. While their four-set match never exploded with fireworks or produced any incidents embarrassing enough for YouTube, it delivered on that promise.
Creative to a fault, each of them came up with shots that you don’t see every day—or any day. A no-look running flick backhand pass from Dimitrov; a slice drop volley hit from no-man’s land by Paire; a backhand volley that nearly spun back over the net by Dimitrov; a delicately measured forehand drop by Paire, attempted while he was serving for the match in the fourth set.
There were roundhouse backhand winners, slice forehands hit for no reason whatsoever, smooth chip-and-charge attacks, and, especially from the Dimitrov side, routine backhands dumped into the middle of the net—the shot killed him all day. Paire plays a more perverse and twisted game on clay, where he’s liable to hit five drop shots in a row. Hard courts may have forced him to rein in his shot selection today. When he lost a close first set, all signs pointed to Paire going away for good. Strangely, and perhaps least predictable of all, he kept it together.
Not that Paire, who was the picture of French tennis player today in a striped Lacoste shirt and stubbly beard, was calm throughout. He can seem at times to be playing a second match in his head. He’ll hit shots that don’t quite make sense in the one you’re watching, and look perturbed at events that remain invisible to the rest of us. Much of the time, Paired appears to be waiting to go into a slow burn. After one error in the first set today, he flipped his racquet gently behind him. Two points later, it went spinning into the back tarp. After a third botched shot, Paire turned toward a line judge and raised his racquet as if he were going to throw it at him. A French girl in front of me screamed “Non!” Maybe Paire heard her; he put the racquet down and turned away.
This was also a match plagued by questionable calls—Dimitrov asked for the supervisor, and Paire confronted the chair umpire a few times in his vaguely seething way. It ended with Dimitrov, who was troubled by a foot problem, surrendering mildly in the fourth set. He looked hurt, but he also didn’t want to fight anymore.
From the fans’ perspective, it was an exhibition of flash, of style for style’s sake—perfect for a sunny weekday afternoon on a sidecourt. Paire’s supporters certainly seemed to enjoy it.
“Magnifique!” they cried.
“Thataway, Benny,” they said.