The crucial day finally came yesterday, the one where you’re told to buy a mattress, eat a hot dog, take off your white shoes (darn), put away the tequila and white wine and pull out the red wine and whiskey (sorry, I’m just not ready), and, if you’re anywhere near New York, make your way to the Open.
For a Manhattanite, a trip to Flushing Meadows is now more than a corporate perk; clients pretty much expect it. That’s why the USTA can charge $550 for a single courtside box seat at Ashe Stadium during the first week (that’s not an exaggeration). Typically, the day sessions at the Open are filled with out-of-towners on bus trips, sporting cargo shorts and white shirts; the evenings are reserved for white-wine-swilling office drones from Manhattan dressed the opposite way, in dresses and dark colors. Labor Day, when everyone can come, brings the two groups together in a sort of casual harmony. There are people right under your nose and as far as the eye can see. By this point in the tournament, though, the draws have narrowed, so there are only a few matches per session. On Monday there were many, many people milling around and very, very little pro tennis to watch.
I’ve been riding the Long Island Rail Road to Flushing this year rather than the famous, and famously slow, No. 7 subway train. The railroad travels through a modern-day Valley of Ashes in Queens, one long line of junkyards, factories, generators, smokestacks, and Best Buys. The highlight comes near the end, when you get a good look at the rusting pavilions and fake rockets still left from the 1964 New York World’s Fair—the kitsch future that didn’t quite happen. On Monday a woman in the seat behind me was insisting, loudly into her cellphone, for the entire trip out: “Honestly Mom, he’s different, he’s such a great guy.”
First I took a walk through the grounds to see if I could catch a few notable juniors, including Ryan Thacher of California, a kid who Pete Sampras is apparently high on (no such luck). What struck me watching the juniors was how professionalized they are, in their perfect Nike and Adidas outfits, massive racquet bags, and practiced struts between points. There’s little sense of adolescent awkwardness; they just look like younger pros.
In the main plaza outside Ashe, there were bodies parked in every available space, including the stools in two cocktails bars that have quietly sprouted there this year. It wasn't an all-white crowd by any means. There was a little yacht club, a lot of public park, some Wall St., frat boy, suburban family, sweater-over-shoulder preppie, Hamptons babe (i.e., blonde hair, designer shades, dangerous tans). The only unifying theme I could find among this U.S. holiday crowd was a commitment to a decent standard of sporty or casual dress, and a desire to at least check out what the sport of tennis is all about these days. Over the loudspeaker, a horribly canned voice instructed all of us to “remember to stay hydrated.” I tried to imagine how this advice would go over at the Italian Open in Rome and started to laugh out loud.
On the big screen outside Ashe, Tommy Haas had begun to turn the tables on James Blake in the second set, so I headed inside. The stadium was breezy and fairly full; the blimp hovered above, telling us to do something (stay hydrated?). On one side, up in a luxury box, sat the infamous J-Block, by far the worst-dressed group at the suite level. Blue, three-sizes-too-large T-shirts with matching headbands; so that’s what people are wearing in Connecticut these days.
Did the J-block cross the line? Generally, no. In a polite tennis setting, they are certainly jarring at first, and their chants are feeble, the way most U.S. sports chants are (“Fif-teen thir-tee!” they announced when Blake would reach that score on Haas’ serve.) Their one no-no yesterday came when they began to count how many seconds Haas was taking between serves. That’s dopey and distracting, but they may have gotten a signal from Blake because they didn’t try it again. For his part, Haas had what I thought was a solid answer to the J-block, in the form of his own cheering section on the other side of the stadium: A row of longhaired, rail-thin Euro supermodels.
This was a match not between champions but between survivors. Blake, 27, lost his father and broke his neck; Haas, 29, has had innumerable injuries, and his parents were in a serious motorcycle accident. They even cited each other’s problems as inspiration after the match. In that sense, it was the moment of the tournament for both of these veteran pros, the most either could rationally hope for: a nationally televised Ashe Stadium match in the second week of the Open.
As successful as they’ve been over the years, Haas and Blake are both well versed in the art of losing. Neither is known as particularly strong mentally—Blake lost his first nine five-set matches, and Haas has only sporadically brought his best at the big events. It’s been said in the past that the top players didn’t mind seeing him in their section at a major. As the match went on, it became a question of who was going to break the pattern and prove himself a competent front-runner. It didn’t happen: As a veteran fan would almost certainly have predicted, neither guy ran away with it. The match just ended.
When I sat down, I found myself wondering what's held Haas back over the years. Watching him live in a big stadium, he looked less physically imposing than younger guys like Rafael Nadal or Tomas Berdych. Haas is technically sound, hits every shot more than competently, and can get on a serious roll with his serve. But in this match he struggled to put rallies together that would get him in an aggressive position. When he did that, he invariably won the point—he’s got an ironclad attacking game, right down to his smooth half-volley. But when he was ahead, Haas abandoned that game for passive slicing from behind the baseline. That's where he ended most of the points he lost. A few years ago, when Haas had one of his many resurgences, someone asked his coach at the time, Red Ayme, what they were doing differently. He said that the key was to keep Haas focused on using his weapons from the middle of the court and making points as simple as possible. It’s still an issue.
On the other side of the net, Blake had his own issues, and they balanced out Haas’ perfectly. The American is devoted to the all or nothing, and his devotion only increased as the match went on. Winner return, netted return. Crazy running crosscourt winner from way out of position; crazy running crosscourt forehand 10 feet out. That’s the way it went for Blake yesterday. Somehow, it was almost good enough to win him the match.
Haas looked ready to blow it first. He shanked returns on break points in the fifth set and double faulted to give Blake a match point. That’s when he made another perfect attacking play, and then held off two more match points with first-serve winners. The match, after all that time, came down to one point, in which Haas hit two outstanding topspin lobs to salvage a seemingly lost rally and go up 4-3. Blake had a chance in that point, but he pulled up and pushed a sitter backhand down the middle to give Haas a shot at the second lob. That was it: Time had run out. Blake had blinked last.
The match ended on two failed HawkEye challenges, one by Haas and then one by Blake on match point. As we walked out of the stadium, Peter Bodo said that this was the moment HawkEye had once and for all proven itself worthwhile. I guess it’s true, because I hadn’t even noticed. In the short span of a year, the replay system has quietly helped make the sport simpler, easier, and more sure of itself. Here was the scenario Mary Carillo had ranted about when HawkEye was introduced: Ashe Stadium, fifth set, crowd into it, a close call on match point—and the player is out of challenges. Well, this could conceivably happen, but my sense is that the tidy finish we saw yesterday will be much more common.
In his presser, Blake was upbeat and stressed the positive. Too upbeat for me—Blake almost sounded relieved that the Open, which is what he more than any other player builds to each year, was over. Like Tim Henman at Wimbledon in the past, he piles a lot of pressure into two weeks. It’s seems a little too easy for him to want to escape it.
Haas came in next, looking small and weathered at the podium. He’s a true vet, a guy who has been on both sides of close matches almost every week of his adult life. He fought through this one, but he was under no illusion that it meant bigger things for him in the future. His level-headedness made me feel good for Haas. He won’t win this tournament, but he kept the competitive demons at bay for one afternoon, and he sounded satisfied.
I walked out of Ashe and up the boardwalk to the train, past the sweaters-over-shoulders and the Hamptons babes. At the top of the stairs that led down to the track, a deep orange sun appeared just above a line of trees. It was in the opposite direction from what I would have thought—I was turned around out there in Queens. At the bottom of the steps I couldn't see the sun anymore; it had disappeared behind the trees. Was that it for summer? No, it's just too early, I decided. I'm going to pretend it's still going—and keep the whiskey in the cabinet—until someone tellsl me I can't anymore.