!Oudin Every year at the Open there’s a day that calls out to be spent on the Grandstand. This is the third and most compact show court at Flushing Meadows, as well as the most civilized. You, if you arrive early enough, can sit in the shade all afternoon here, walled off from the elements and the spectator swarms. You’ll be able to fit in your seat—this is not always the case at Grand Slam tennis tournaments—and it will even have a back on it. Or, if you need a little sun on your day off at the Open, you can climb the stairs on the opposite side of the arena and find an entire 20-foot bench open for your sprawling pleasure. On hot days, it’s common to catch four or five people lying on their backs up there, face to the sky, one arm wrapped around their eyes. I always love seeing a stray fan or two parked all the way in the top row, far from the court, with 50 empty rows in front of them. I guess there’s something about being at the top of anything.
I know some people who swear allegiance to other courts in other parts of the the world. The Bullring at Roland Garros, for the circular shape that lends it a gladiatorial atmosphere; the old Court 2 at Wimbledon, with its dark cloud of doom and chaos hanging overhead; the Stadia Petrangeli in Rome, which is overseen by a dozen kitsch-heroic statues commissioned by Mussolini; even Louis Armstrong Stadium, which in its current downsized incarnation offers a wide view of the sky and a glimpse of red sunset in the evening, has its champions.
But none of those locations, as unique as they are, sound like the Grandstand. While the lower seats get you as close as any side court, the higher walls that close you off to the outside world also close in the sound. They give the crack of the ball at contact a longer and louder lifespan; nothing else in tennis fills a space quite like the clean thump of a big serve does here. Add to that a couple of tall trees that jut up above the far walls and soften the landscape, and the lightly buzzing cicadas that reside there at this time of year, and you can feel like you’ve left the rest of this hectic event behind.
As with the entire Open, though, the quality of play in the first few days on the Grandstand has been gradually diluted over the years. First Arthur Ashe Stadium was built, demoting the GS from the second- to third-fiddle. Then the first round was extended over three days instead of two. Finally the number of seeded players in each singles draw was doubled, from 16 to 32. It was common in the old days to get a close-up glimpse of big-stadium gods like Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg out here. And my first year at the Open, in ’83, I laid flat on my stomach so I could see a tiny sliver of the Grandstand court, where Aaron Krickstein,16, upset Vitas Geruilaitis in five sets. (Looking back, I think of this match as the precise moment when tennis turned once and for all from the net to the baseline, but that’s a story for another week.)
Other highlights, among many, from this court including seeing Taylor Dent put a first serve right into the forehead of a fan in the front row; watching Andy Murray puke; seeing Anna Kournikova play doubles in front of a very very attentive, and primarily male, crowd; and watching three teenage girls in the front row keep their collective eyes on every move a young Tommy Haas made. At the end, they rolled up their sleeves so he could sign their arms. I can’t describe the look of heartbreak on their faces when he walked to the other side of the net to sign his autographs before disappearing down the runway to the locker room.
The lineups on the Grandstand are less spectacular now, but there will always be entertainment to be had from this vantage point. It was mild and breezy out there today; the leaves in the trees above crinkled in the wind. Only a couple people felt compelled to have a nap, though the arena was never more than half full—not such a bad thing around here. Continuing with yesterday’s American theme, there were three U.S. players slotted on the Grandstand today: Chase Buchanan, Melanie Oudin, and Ryan Sweeting. I tried to see as much of Buchanan, an 18-year-old from Ohio, as I could, but it wasn’t easy. He went out first against Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and came back a little more than an hour later, an 0, 2, and 1 loser. By the time I arrived, Tsonga was bounding confidently all over the court and Buchanan, who really did look like a boy playing a man (a much springier man), had his shoulders slumped and his hair matted to his forehead forlornly. By the end, he could barely get his racquet high enough to return Tsonga’s high-bouncing ground stokes. It’s too bad, because Tsonga is the perfect performer for the Grandstand—like his countryman Gael Monfils, he looks like he could jump right out of this court.
A grim start for the U.S., no question, and the crowd was quietly stunned through most of it. But leave it to spunky blond teen Melanie Oudin of Georgia to turn it around. Oudin came with a small cheering section of her own, though I think they surprised even her. After someone yelled, “Go Melanie!’ from way up in the bleachers, Oudin stopped and peered upward, as if she were trying to identify who exactly it might be.
There was no confusion in Oudin's game, as she rolled with surprising ease over Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a fellow teenager who had blitzed her in the junior event here a few years ago. Oudin, fit and muscular in a sleeveless shirt and sporting a bold pair of pink and yellow sneakers, could do no wrong. She counterpunched well, threw her opponent off with her slice, served to the corners, and hit her forehand with more smooth force than I remembered from watching her at Wimbledon. She even threw in a nasty drop shot. Oudin is good at keeping things simple and nimble, from the way she bounces way up high on her toes before receiving serve, to the way she counterpunches even the hardest-hit ball with her clean two-handed backhand out in front of her body. Plus, like all self-respecting pros today, she can yell “Come on!”, do a fist-pump, and call for the towel all in one quick, confident motion.
In her presser afterward, Oudin, hoop earrings in, expressed the same disbelief as the rest of us that, after Serena and Venus Williams, she is now the third-highest-ranked American woman. She also seemed happy with the choices that she and her twin sister had made as little kids. Melanie decided to become a pro tennis player; her sister decided to become an obstetrician. Next up for the pro tennis player: Elena Dementieva. We’ll find out what this particular future of American tennis might hold.
After those two blowouts, it was still bright and early, and the stands were still half full, when the third Grandstand match began, between Sweeting and No. 16 seed Marin Cilic. From a few feet away, men’s tennis looks as brutal as it does beautiful, awesome in its machine-like efficiency—you start to wonder if the sport could someday be perfected. The whole idea can come down to: “If you don’t hit a winner immediately, I’m going to.” It’s not serve and volley tennis as much as serve and bullet winner tennis. Very little separated Cilic and Sweeting to the naked eye, but it was still enough to make the match a straight-setter whose outcome was never in question. Cilic is taller, has a smoother service motion, and hits with more consistent depth on his returns when it matters. Sweeting is just a little stiff in both his serve and his strokes, and he whips up with a dangerous amount of wrist on his forehand. The American did his best to get the big guy on the run by taking his returns on the rise and sending them to the corners, but it was a risky play to rely on. Cilic could stay closer to his comfort zone, and that’s the guy who’s usually going to win.
By afternoon’s end, the moderate amount of energy and tension that had existed in the Grandstand had been obliterated. When Cilic went up two sets to one, and when Elena Dementieva began the fourth match with a break of serve against Camille Pin, the air went out of the place. Everything was a foregone conclusion. When this happens, spectating changes entirely. There's no more suspense or tension or rooting whatsoever. As Dementieva drove another backhand past Pin, all we could do was slouch and look, impassively, at the two people moving around the court. We were waiting for the inevitable, for the paint to dry, for the grass to grow, for our sunny Tuesday on the Grandstand to its easygoing end. It won't be one to remember, but it sounded good while it lasted.