What makes the U.S. Open unique among the Grand Slams? Size, of course, is the first answer that comes to mind, and it’s the only one that’s necessary. From its vast, teeming, city-like grounds to the hulking monstrosity known as Arthur Ashe Stadium, the Open is staged, for better and worse, on an entirely different scale than the other majors.
A trickier question: What relationship does the tournament have to its immediate surroundings? What, if anything, makes it a uniquely American, or uniquely New York, event? Your first answer is going to be that its more beholden to television than the other majors, and that’s true. But while none of the other Slams cram their men’s semifinals and final into a single weekend, none of them ignore the wishes of their broadcasters, either. Wimbledon went to the expense of building a roof so the tournament could keep rolling on TV.
The question for me is, does the Open feel more American when you’re on the grounds? It’s been my experience that all of the majors live up to their reputations and stereotypes, until you look a little closer, and a little longer. At the French Open, a visitor from the States might start by noticing that the men wear scarves and the women don’t wear fanny-packs or flip-flops. When I was younger, I remember reading that Roland Garros was a “see-and-be-seen rite of spring for fashionable Paris,” or something along those lines, and that’s what it can appear to be in the expensive seats inside the center court. Stay for more than a few days, though, and wander the fringes of Roland Garros, and you might glimpse a pair of cut-offs here, a backwards baseball cap there, and a tacky T-shirt in the seat next to you. Not everything is in exquisite taste, even in Paris in the springtime.
The same goes for Wimbledon, where, as far as I can remember, I’ve only been referred to as “Old Chap” once. And as enjoyable as the Australian Open is, it has never struck me as any “happier” than the other Slams. I was caught once in the media dining room in Melbourne opening a bottle of water before I’d paid for it. One of the kitchen workers walked up to me and said, “That’s not free, you know.” So much for those easygoing Aussies!
But there are differences, and each event has its reputation for a reason. More than the other majors, the Open makes me feel what I can only describe as <em>the hustle</em>, in both the energetic and the commercial sense. As with its host city, there’s a sense of churning on the grounds. Where Wimbledon and Roland Garros, two ivy-riddled clubs that were built in the 1920s, offer a sense of tradition and permanence, the Open is about movement and money. Where they do their best to camouflage their commercial side, we place it front and center.
The churn begins, for anyone who lives in the city, with the subway ride to the site. There, on a swaying and screeching ride, you can see the city remaking itself. My trip begins on the G line in Brooklyn. Twenty years ago it was a ghost train; now it picks up and deposits the young and hip and tattooed from Greenpoint to Park Slope. At its north end, the G connects with the elevated No. 7, which slowly rattles over building after building, neighborhood after neighborhood in Queens. Here the riders are mostly Asians and Mexicans, newer transplants who have flooded in and transformed the borough over the last 40 years, particularly the areas surrounding the National Tennis Center. For two weeks, tennis fans from all over the country, in their shorts and caps and running shoes, mix with the locals as they go about their workdays and schooldays.
The hustle picks up when you get off the train and lope down the long boardwalk that leads to the grounds. It would feel like a beach resort, if it didn’t also have a feeling of urgency. You can hear the matches being played, the crowds clapping, the chair umpires announcing the scores. It’s tantalizing; you’re almost there. Inside the gates, the pace picks up even more, and the crowds thicken. By the time you arrive, there’s a person in every seat and a line for every court and food stand and bathroom. I always feel a step, or two, or three, behind where I want to be when I’m at the Open.
On your way to Ashe, along with a thousand people, you might catch sight of a hundred corporate logos out of the corner of your eye. Citizen, Xerox, American Express, Mercedes, J.P. Morgan, IBM, Emirates, Heineken, Esurance, Evian, Ralph Lauren, Moet & Chandon, Tiffany, Grey Goose, Nike, Lacoste, the <em>New York Times</em>, Westin, and even a tennis-related company, Wilson: Essentially, these words are the tournament’s decoration.
This is the hustle in the commercial sense, and it’s what defines the Open. There’s plenty of corporate money at Wimbledon, but its main sponsors, Rolex and Slazenger, aren’t as visible as you walk the grounds. And the French Open does not have an announcer who bellows that “one lucky fan” in Row ZZ has just been selected to move to a courtside box, courtesy of Esurance—this, from what I could tell, was a new innovation at the Open in 2012.
I don’t prefer the European or the Australian or the American way. I love that tennis offers four very different world-class events. If I had to choose, the French and Wimbledon would probably be my favorite Slams. I don’t love corporate logos or the devotion to money and ratings at Flushing Meadows, but when I walk across the plaza in front of Ashe when the sun is going down over Manhattan, and thousands of people are roaming and drinking and talking for as far as my eye can see, the Open can feel like the most awesome of the majors.
But it also makes me feel, as I walk across that plaza, that the ground under my feet is a little shakier. Maybe this is the American thing or the New York thing: Here the hustle, the process, the economics are out front. There’s no sense of history, of a culture that has nothing to do with money, to soften it or hide it.
This year, when I went back into the city at night—or, just as often, in the early hours of the next morning—I took the commuter railroad that comes in from Long Island and ends at Penn Station. In the seats around me were teens and 20-somethings dressed up, way dressed up, for a night in Manhattan. Italian and Irish and Jewish kids from the suburbs, their great-grandparents might have lived in the borough neighborhoods that I passed earlier in the day, back when they were new transplants to the city. The churn never ends here.