NEW YORK—What’s the biggest change on the grounds at the U.S. Open this year? The Red Star Cafe, or Heineken Red Star Cafe—I’m not sure what the name is, exactly—has been moved upward. This socializing hub, where the Hamptons bonded with the heartland over $8 beers and a love of tennis, has moved to the second floor. Why? To make room for another U.S. Open Collection store on the ground floor. In other words, to sell more $27 baseball caps and $38 T-shirts.
Too bad—that section of the grounds had a nice flow to it. Now, instead of people and conversation and tennis on TV, there are just the store’s silent, static glass walls, the quiet gloom of generic souvenirs. The one positive to the place is the design of the second floor, which is a groovy-looking box that owes something to the retro-futurism of the 1964 World’s Fair, which took place at Flushing Meadows.
There wasn’t a lot to report from the site yesterday, and what did happen, including a five-setter between American qualifiers Bobby Reynolds and Tim Smychek, I managed to miss. What I did witness was a wrath-of-God afternoon thunderstorm that had fans shrieking as they ran for the exits in Louis Armstrong Stadium.
So my opening edition of Grounds Pass, which will be a fusion of Keeping Tabs and Notebook type posts, will go heavy on the Tabs.
Venus and Serena are Apparently Still Against the World
When I refer to “tabs” at the U.S. Open, I’m mostly talking about two papers, the New York Times and USA Today. The Times in particular takes a special, almost strangely special, interest in the tournament. If it weren’t for the exposure the paper gives it among the city’s professionals and Manhattanites, the event wouldn’t have anything like the status or visibility it does here. Sometimes I think they might even overdo it. The front of today’s sports section, a section that’s also busy covering the Yankees, Mets, Jets, and Giants, is a column on...Jack Sock. Hey, I’m not complaining.
The <em>Times</em> has already produced the most talked-about **feature**](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/venus-and-serena-against-the-world.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=magazine of the tournament with its cover story on Venus and Serena Williams by well-known essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan. Early reports called it “the best tennis writing I’ve read all year” and mentioned David Foster Wallace in the same breath. Which makes sense, of course, because the consensus seems to be that the only good tennis writing is done by writers who don’t normally cover the game, in magazines not normally concerned with sports.
I liked Sullivan’s story, which is mostly about Richard Williams and his uncanny knack for conjuring up reality seemingly from nothing, but I thought it could have been shorter, and if you’re looking for DFW-style pyrotechnics, you won’t found them here. Most tennis fans will know the details of this story, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of the sisters’ journey. Here’s Sullivan’s most poetic flight, about Richard:
I find him powerfully and movingly American somehow. His whole personality seems to have evolved as a complex reaction-structure to an insecurity so profound that it must remain secret, especially from him. Throughout his daughters’ careers, he has gone about fanning a splendor of boxing-promoter language, of lies, half-truths, boasts, misstatements, non sequiturs, buffoonery, needless exaggerations, megalomania, paranoia — as well as here and there genuinely wise, amusing lines — all of which, you begin to feel, are designed (subconsciously, yes, but no less shrewdly) to deflect attention away from a still, small center, the place where he dwells and operates. It’s there that he is who he is, whoever he is.
It’s a description that would work well for a character in a novel, but do I believe it’s one that actually makes sense for Richard? I have no idea.
The McEnroes Versus Each Other
The <em>Times</em> returns for the **latest round between Johnny Mac and Patrick**, over how to develop American tennis champions. Patrick and the USTA have issued a controversial mandate to force young players to use softer balls and shorter courts, to make the sport easier. It’s the right idea, but the mandate...we know Americans don’t take well to those, and they haven’t taken well to this one. There are coaches on each side of the issue. I’ll just say that the basic premise, to get more kids in the U.S. to stick with tennis, is the right one. The organization isn’t ideally designed to produce champions, but it can widen the pool.
Best Quote—from, naturally, Johnny Mac, about his own academy’s needs: “Let’s be honest,” (never a promising start to a quote). “Do you think that the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are spent on the Top 100 in the world for their coaching is necessary? Does Mardy Fish need to have his coach paid for if the guy is making millions of dollars? As opposed to giving us a grant to go find some great athletes in Harlem?”
There goes Mac making friends with the current players again.
Odds and Ends
—<em>USA Today</em>**breaks down** Roger Federer’s comments after his win over Donald Young on Monday night, in which he called Andy Murray’s Wimbledon defeat “crushing,” and his own loss to Murray in the gold-medal match at the Olympics as “90 percent very happy to have won the [silver] medal.”
—The <em>Times</em> Greg Bishop gets the best detail from case of <strong>Open referee and murder suspect</strong> Lois Ann Goodman: She was chewing gum at her hearing.
—The Open has a Tumblr page, which featured **this clip** today, from a Novak Djokovic pre-tournament practice session. A boy called out, “Djokovic, will you marry me.” The crowd laughed. Novak brought the kid on court to hit a few serves and get a hug.
Like that guy.