US Open Tickets on Swickets

Staff Writer Eric Chima
For two weeks each year, my girlfriend doesn’t see me. My roommates hate me. My parents wonder why I answer every call with “Quiet! He’s about to serve!” And for some reason, my friend Ben doesn’t understand why his birthday comes second behind staid, traditional tennis. Sorry, buddy. Shouldn’t have been born during the second week of the U.S. Open.

There’s a growing community like me, who have already realized that tennis is no longer about tea, country clubs and guys in sweatbands. We’re absorbed for a fortnight (Where else but in tennis does anyone say “fortnight”?), caught up in a drama that our peers just don’t appreciate. Soccer fans know where I’m coming from—every four years, anyway. But during the World Cup, you get maybe three games per day, for about six hours. On an ideal day, the Open features up to ten hours of coverage, featuring a half-dozen matches, with a handy break around dinnertime for when the significant other just won’t leave you alone.

See, there’s a reason the USA’s highest-attended annual sporting event isn’t the Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Finals. And though the U.S. Open has the advantage of two full weeks to build attendance, its fans are coming out from all walks of life, drawn to a spectacle that would make the NFL (or MTV) proud.

And what better place for a show than New York. Flushing Meadows doesn’t have the regal air of Wimbledon or the iconic red clay of Roland Garros, but the event makes up for those shortcomings in sheer magnitude. It’s about the tennis, sure, but there is so much more going on than that. The Open includes music and interactive activities for the spectators (Try your luck with a racquet and a radar gun—can you serve as fast as Andy Roddick? Nope. But you could hit a better backhand.) The fashions are just as watchable as the forehands, as anyone who saw Serena Williams’s cat suit can attest. The courts have gone from traditional green to a radical blue, making it easier for spectators to see the ball. And now the Open has embraced technology, using computers to judge line calls— a change other sports would do well to emulate.

In fact, there’s a lot about the U.S. Open that other sports—and the rest of the tennis world—should be watching. It’s the only Grand Slam event shown primarily on a channel other than ESPN, so while golf competes for airtime with bass fishing and poker, tennis is always afforded almost a full day of nearly uninterrupted coverage. It’s like the Super Bowl festivities, except without Chris Berman performing a root canal on your ears.

And the lights! Oh, the lights. While the rest of the sports world decided a long time ago that playing at night was a good idea, the U.S. Open is the only major tennis tournament to wise up and bathe its players in glorious light. The night sessions in Arthur Ashe Stadium are legendary, and a fifth set that extends past midnight has a certain gravitas that 2 o’clock matches do not.

Because it’s the drama of the tennis that attracts the fans, and the Open embraces its role as the Super Bowl of its sport. There are four Grand Slams, of course, along with the year-end championships, but none determine a true champion quite like the U.S. Open. Wimbledon’s antiquated grass unfairly rewards the power player, and nobody else really cares about the surface anymore. Roland Garros punishes anyone who isn’t lightning-quick and metronome-consistent, leading to boring matches decided on errors. And the Australian Open, for all its good-natured fun, is played at the beginning of the season on courts that cause injuries and in debilitating heat—the perfect recipe to put no-names in the final.

But Flushing Meadows is perfect—played on quicker hard courts that give all styles a chance, and at the end of the year, when the best players have rounded into form. Tennis fits well in New York, adapting nicely to the rock-and-roll vibe (God I sound old) and representing well the international flavor. And in typical New York fashion, the stars are what matter—they seem larger than life, especially compared to Wimbledon, where the All-England Club manages to overshadow its players.

Flushing Meadows is also the place where, amazingly, tennis becomes the forward-thinking sport. Players wear what they want, up to and including knee-high boots, while the NFL fines its players for wearing Adidas. They embrace computer technology, unlike the other major sports; how sweet would it have been to see Lou Piniella, mid-tantrum, put in his place by a computer replay? And the drug policy throughout tennis puts everyone else to shame (Barry Bonds wouldn’t have lasted a week on the ATP Tour—not that he could keep up with the pace of the game anyway). Players even play for prize money instead of multi-million dollar free agent deals—what a novel concept!

There aren’t many sporting events that can still prompt me to write a love letter like this one. But the one-on-one competition and the goddammit-this-match-means-everything vibe is matched only by March Madness. It manages to transcend the cynicism that is so much a part of sports these days.

That’s why I’ll once again spend the early part of September parked in a seat or in front of the television, my main calisthenics coming when I leap from my chair to celebrate a winner. My roommates will fight me for the remote (I have the same conversation every year: “I don’t care if the NFL is on! This is the final!”). My lunch breaks from work will stretch to two or three hours. The few friends who like tennis will become much more important to my life.

And even after watching 80 hours of tennis in two weeks, I still won’t be able to hit 80 mph on my serve.