Last night, I went to my home-away-from-home this week, the cavernous Beer Hunter sports bar on the corner of Washington and Highway 111, with Fellow Press Pariah Matt Cronin of Inside Tennis and Tennisreporters.net. In case the name of the joint isn’t enough, the basic amenities will ease any fears you may have going in about having to chit-chat with a Nobel Prize winner—unless they’ve been handed out lately to the guy who discovered that it’s much easier to mash a beer can on your forehead if it’s empty (the beer can, that is). The Beer Hunter offers the obligatory 6,453 (give or take a few hundred) different kinds of beer on tap, pool tables, TV and video screens, electronic games, Pop-a-Shot basketball cages and, on the walls, autographed NFL football jerseys from the likes of John Elway.
Surprisingly, the Beer Hunter is on the sedate side for a sports bar; the music isn’t too loud and the lengthy bar, which kind of jogs around a few corners, features the best barstools I’ve passed out—whoops—sat on in a long time. They’re roomy and upholstered, and they even have arms. Make your way across the floor (caution: rubber soles will stick so badly your might suspect that you’ve been transformed into some kind of superhero with prehensile feet). Climb into a chair. It’s all good. We bumped into WTA tour communications manager Amy Binder. She was with a friend, and holding a beer in one hand (the strangest things happen in a sports bar!) and, clutching a tiny basketball in the other, a demented gleam in her eyes. Turns out she’s a Pop-a-Shot freak. “I’m addicted,” she confessed. “It’s all about how fast you can put those points up. It’s not even like I played basketball, at least not after junior high, where I was the smallest girl on the team.” Pop-a-Shot gives the diminutive Binderella, who stands just 5-foot-1, a chance to get in touch with her inner low-post man. Note that the other tennis regular who light up the Pop-a-Shot scoreboard this week was that midget Andy Roddick. Binder is a real help to us when we need information, stats, or one-one-one interviews with players. In the not-so-distant past, the WTA tour “communications” specialists functioned liked a bizarre cult of glowering vestal virgins, clustered around the goddesses (Serena, Monica, Martina) to protect them from the critical, cynical, insensitive pariahs in the press. This made the atmosphere in many a press room so tense at times that you could cut it with a knife. Binderella’s different. She’s fun to work with and be around. She appears neither mesmerized nor intimidated by the players and she operates on this really crazy premise for a communications specialist—that she’s supposed to facilitate, not impede, interactions between the press and players. Go figure.