In the proud sportswriter’s tradition of trying to find and accentuate the negative, I’ve always wanted to write a column about how the U.S. Open qualifying tournament is overrated. Granted, it might read a little like Christopher Hitchens’ infamous rip job on Mother Teresa, and it would almost certainly make me look like the world’s most ungrateful tennis fan. But I’m enough of a contrarian that, if everyone in the world says something is perfect, I’ll try to find a reason otherwise. And contrary to public opinion, the qualies aren’t perfect.
For example, they’re always advertised as being free, but that’s only if you want to put yourself through a brutally slow, 40-minute ride on the 7 train to Flushing Meadows. If you choose to drive, it'll cost you 20 bucks to park; that is, if you can find the right barbed-wire parking lot, which might involve three circles around the entire grounds, followed by a U-turn or two.
Also, while the weather has been superb so far this year, it might get hot, so watch out for that. And don’t go there thinking you’re going to see Roger Federer . . . wait, you do get to see Federer and the other stars practice on the show courts now? You see, this is where my overrated idea begins to founder.
While I’ve spent too many sweltering afternoons watching Jeff Salzenstein and Cecil Mamiit duke it out against fellow journeymen over the years, I can’t really argue against going to the qualies. Even if it does run you $20—plus $4 for every water and $12 for every corned beef sandwich and $25 for every T-shirt—they’re a pretty good deal. You might not see the absolute highest quality tennis, but you do get quantity.
Every so often, you do get to glimpse top-level guys as well, either on the way up, or when they’re (perhaps temporarily) on the way down. One year, I was greeted by a friend who said, “You gotta see Soderling. He can really rake.” I followed him out to a distant court and found what, at the time, seemed like the tallest natural baseliner I’d ever seen. Soderling could, indeed, rake, and I’ve never enjoyed watching the Sod more than in that initial few moments. Another time, that same friend and I caught a teenage Andy Murray, already a U.S. Open junior champion and known quantity, moaning and groaning and drop-shotting his way to a three-set win. You could see all of his positives and negatives already in evidence. The bratty self-doubt and the startling variety of shots were both there—even then, Murray reminded me of fellow genius-brats John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase, and made me wonder if having that kind of variety didn’t mess with your head a little, or, perhaps, whether having a messed-up head was essential to being able to do a lot of different things with a tennis ball.
But genius is rare in the qualies, So is sustained excellence. This tournament, contested by outsiders who desperately want to get inside, is about flaws, both overcoming and succumbing to them. If that doesn’t sound dazzling, it’s still a very useful thing to see. Nothing will make you appreciate the difficulty and brilliance of a Novak Djokovic down the line backhand than seeing the same shot tried many times, and missed many times, all over the grounds during the qualies. It will make you watch the real Open, once it begins, with new, more appreciative eyes.
As for the qualies themselves, they’re a chance to wander through a less-crowded National Tennis Center, wait in shorter lines for food, and find wider spaces in the stands where you can lean back on the bench behind you and put your feet up on the bench in front of you—you can forget doing any of those things by Monday. While most of the players you see won’t be budding Murrays or Soderlings, the true fan will find favorites to root for anyway. I’ve known devotees of Michael Russell, Zach Fleishman, Jaime Yzaga, Bjorn Phau, a young Jelena Jankovic, and a dozen other players who caught people’s eye with a certain shot or smile or walk. My friend Jon Levey and I liked to watch an Italian with the last name Veronelli—I won’t Google his first name; not knowing it is somehow part of the charm of the memory. He was a tall, long-haired, somewhat awkward player who fought hard and inevitably lost the match we were watching. Somewhere along the line, Levey and I connected Veronelli with the old cheesily romantic ads for Riunite wine that we used to see on television as kids. “Ah, if only I had just a little Riunite,” we imagined Veronelli thinking to himself on court, “I could win this match.” (As good American TV watchers, Riunite, rather than Dante or Michelangelo or Fellini, was our cultural reference to Italy.)
Anyway, that’s part of the qualies’ appeal—you choose your own favorite and make your own entertainment out of a mellow afternoon away from the office. Of course, it’s not always going to be mellow when a desperate band of outsiders are struggling to find a way inside, to the Show. The last day of qualifying is as intense as it gets in tennis, intense in a more ragged, realistic way than, say, a Grand Slam final—every top player has, at some level, made it; to lose in the last round of the qualies is the definition of not making it, of coming just short of the dream. For many of these players, there’s a chance they’ll never get this close again. It can make for as many ugly moments of failure as it can for heartwarming successes.
A couple of years ago, I watched as Laura Robson, British teenager and junior champion, experienced one of those ugly moments. Up 4-0 in the third set, two games away from earning a spot in the Open the hard way, she collapsed and lost. After the last point, she sunk down on the sidelines and started sobbing. It took her a long time to stop. There would be other days for Robson, but she probably wouldn’t have believed it if you'd asked her right then.
How could I call the qualifying overrated after seeing something like that? It’s not the official Open, but on the last day of the qualies, you can see a personal—human, ugly, ragged, triumphant—Grand Slam final on every court.