At the U.S. Open, a Tennis Reporter on Familiar Grounds

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As a reporter who covers tennis for The New York Times, I’m typically 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 event since 1978; I used to be a 9-year-old tennis-head who grew up in Westchester County through the American tennis growth. The event 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 event. My mother and father took my two brothers and me. We sat method up within the crimson bleachers of Louis Armstrong Stadium, the venue’s predominant enviornment. It was scorching and breezy, because it typically is while you’re a stone’s throw from Flushing Bay. Roscoe Tanner was enjoying. He may serve the ball 150 miles an hour despite racket expertise that’s now thought of 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 would lean over a railing and watch the motion on the Grandstand courtroom about 150 toes beneath. 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 yr, my brother and I snagged seats just a few 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 enjoying 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, have been coming into the membership. New York felt like the middle of the tennis universe.

In my 30s, I grew to become a sportswriter and ultimately a specialist who principally covers tennis and the Olympics. Most individuals assume I’ve one of many world’s biggest jobs. They’re not flawed. I usually spend about three months a yr on the street, masking the main 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 individuals, together with new and longtime volunteers, who make them attainable.

I’m unsure any nation’s followers relish sport as a lot because the Aussies. The French Open has these lovely crimson 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 event is basically faraway from its popularity as an elitist sport for the wealthy.

We have Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, the Williams Sisters, Frances Tiafoe, Coco Gauff and plenty of others to thank for that. It additionally helps that the nation’s signature tennis occasion occurs in a public park, quite than a personal membership.

The stadiums aren’t hallowed grounds however utilitarian concrete packing containers. Yes, there are some fancier, company enclaves and really expensive cocktails, however there’s a lot concerning the area that indicators inclusion; the complicated is called for King, a lady who proudly identifies as lesbian, and its predominant 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 event ends, you’ll be able to reserve a time and play together with your buddies on those self same courts. I’ve hit loads of balls there. I’ve watched considered one of my youngsters apply and play matches there. Try doing that on the All England Club.

This yr’s event is steaming towards the end. So lots of the massive names have performed deep into the event: Djokovic. Alcaraz. Gauff. I will probably be within the decrease bowl, about 10 rows up from the courtroom, for the boys’s and ladies’s finals — two of my favourite days of the yr — although the opposite 12 days of the event are generally even higher.

Shortly after the event ends, I will probably 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 scorching spot for the coronavirus, after I was considered one of a tiny handful of journalists permitted on web site 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?