Grounds Pass: August 29

NEW YORK—The things you miss when you’re at the U.S. Open. In 2005, it took me two days to find out about what Katrina had done to New Orleans. This morning I had a sinking sense of deja vu while reading that Isaac was “testing the levees” in N.O. as we speak. I hope my friends at the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, the oldest in the United States, are OK. The club was founded in 1876 and is lucky enough to be located in the “sliver by the river,” the thin section of the city that survived Katrina.

It also took me until this morning to find out that Caroline Wozniacki was already out of the tournament. That’s too bad, for her and the draw; New York brought out some of the star in this most conservative of players. She may not have been a “legitimate” No. 1, but she’s not a legitimate first-round loser either.  

The big miss for me yesterday came when I had a free moment late in the afternoon, and my choice of many matches to look in on. Standing in front of the scoreboard in front of Ashe Stadium, I thought about turning left and checking out the fifth set of Juan Monaco vs. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. It was being shown on the big screen in front of me, and it had that vintage, fans-right-on-top-of-the-players, Grandstand atmosphere. But it was kind of a long walk, so I went for quantity over quality and turned the other way, toward the back courts.  

It was the wrong move. When I was done with my tour, I came back to the press room to see that everyone was tuned in to Pico and GGL as they came down the fifth-set stretch. In the Grandstand, the cheers for one player were being drowned out by cheers for the other. The two players see-sawed their way to a fifth-set tiebreaker, which really was the best way to end it. This match reminded me of what I often forget at the other majors—final-set breakers are the way to go. If the players had continued to hold serve, the match would have become gradually less exciting than it was at 5-4 and 6-5. That’s the time to end it, at the peak, because you’re not going to get a second one. To use another analogy, a fifth-set tiebreaker is the exclamation point that a match like this deserves.  

Garcia-Lopez did all of the exclaiming in the breaker; he was exceptionally solid in finishing off this upset. I watched it all on a TV screen, a few hundred yards from where it was actually happening. Absurd, right? But I’ve done it a hundred times before. Those are some of my greatest Open memories—all of those Grandstand classics that I...missed.  

Here’s a little more of what was being said about the tournament yesterday.  

You Know You’ve Made It When...

For Andy Murray, it’s when you fly across an ocean only to be asked questions in the street about your Prince’s romp in Vegas.  

MUZZA HITS THE BIG TIME  

Andy Murray knows he’s gone big time—because cameramen are hanging around outside his hotel

So says the <em>Sun</em> **today**.  

“I had a cameraman, I have no idea who he was working for,” Murray said, “waiting outside the hotel the other day. At first he congratulated me on the gold medal and then asked me whether I had seen pictures of Prince Harry and what I thought of the crown jewels. I actually said ‘no comment’ and then I ran away.”  

I have trouble imagining Murray literally running away from a cameraman, or even saying “crown jewels.” I guess this is his reward for all of the hard work that went into winning the Olympics—questions about what the royal family gets up to in Vegas.  

The Ref Did It

You know it’s tennis season when there’s not one, but two, stories in the papers about linespeople. There was a new development in the case of Lois Ann “Lolo” Goodman, the lineswoman accused of killing her husband with a coffee mug. Or, as the <em>New York Daily News</em> put it a few days ago in a masterful headline that I unaccountably missed:  

COPS SERVE UP LOVE GAME IN COFFEE CUP SLAY CASE  

That could be right up there with the all-time tabloid classic, “Headless Torso in Topless Bar.”  

Anyway, yesterday Goodman’s lawyer asserted that it was “physically impossible for her to have done this,” because she suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, hearing loss, and constant spinal pain. She’s also awaiting another shoulder replacement.  

Forget killing her husband, how did she ever bend down to look at a line?  

—In other ump-oriented news, the <em>Times</em> **reports** that the Open “remains involved in a lawsuit alleging that between 2005 and 2011, it violated labor laws by denying proper wages and overtime pay to its chair umpires and line judges.”  

Umpires are paid “between $115 and $250 per day,” depending on their certification levels. That’s the lowest level of compensation among the Grand Slams. It’s time for a raise.  

Another Year, Another Dollar

Speaking of needing a raise, the <em>Sydney Morning Herald</em> has a **first-person article** by tennis pro Sam Groth, ranked No. 256.  

DIMINISHING RETURNS WHEN YOU PLAY IN THE RED ZONE  

Groth was the first alternate for the Open’s qualies this year but didn’t make it in. If he had, he says, “my prize money would have covered my flights, and maybe a couple of nights in the hotel. Instead, I’ve just added another hefty amount to my bloated credit card bill.”  

According to Groth, there hasn’t been a prize money increase at the Futures—the sub-Challenger minor-league tournaments he plays—since 1998. He could really use one: After expenses, he made a grand total of $1 in 2011.  

I started this post talking about what I missed yesterday; I’ll finish with what I did see: That loved and loathed side-court entertainer named Fabio Fognini. The Italian apparently likes the Big Apple. When he arrived here this year, he tweeted “New York City, BABY!”—what else needed to be said? For two sets yesterday, the Fog man looked ready to hit the city’s dance floors. In deep trouble against France’s Edouard Roger-Vasselin, Fognini chuckled at his misses and joked with the local Italians who had come out to see him.  

All of that seemed to loosen Fognini up, though, and help him play better. He came back, improbably, to win in five. But my favorite Fog moment, as it usually is, was something he said rather than something he did with his racquet. After Roger-Vasselin hit a mishit winner, Fognini came to my corner of the court and said something very emphatically in Italian. The Italians around me looked at each other and started laughing—I’m guessing he said something unprintable about that lucky shot. On the next point, Roger-Vasselin hit a net-cord winner. Fognini was in the other corner this time. When he saw the ball dribble over, he raised his arm and started spouting more words of disgust. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the people in the other corner could. They looked at each other and started laughing. God knows what he was saying about that shot.