On my third and last visit to the 2006 US Open, on Thursday, September 7, I breezed through security with my bag in under three minutes. Perhaps the line was so short because this time I had arrived at 10:30 a.m. rather than just after noon, or maybe it’s that no one goes to the Open on the second Thursday. In either case, for a moment, I felt like the terrorists had not won.
Milling around the grounds before play began at 11:00, I saw Court 5 being covered with carpeting. I can understand why some of the outside courts are taken out of commission as the tournament goes on, but why does that happen to the Grandstand or —most of time but not in this rain-soaked year — Louis Armstrong Stadium? I should think it would be a good experience for some of the juniors to play on a show court. It also would be good for the spectators, because the show courts, unlike the field courts, all offer places to sit in the shade. This is not a small matter, as evidenced by a video story on the Web site of the New York Times featuring interviews with fans who decamped to the food court and elsewhere to get out of the second Thursday’s bright sun. Or maybe that’s the idea after all: in the absence of a comfortable place to sit, spectators will head for the cash registers.
Louis Armstrong Stadium
Virginia Ruano-Pascual (Spain)/Paola Suarez (Argentina) v. Nathalie Dechy (France)/Vera Zvonareva (Russia)
My first match on Thursday was a women’s doubles quarterfinal between the seventh-seeded team of Ruano-Pascual and Suarez, who were once the top team in the world, and Dechy and Zvonareva. I camped behind the court in Armstrong, in the shady portion of the stands, with my father and uncle. They had come to the Open on Tuesday, a session that was nearly rained out but not quite. The USTA magnanimously offered an opportunity for Tuesday ticket holders to return on Wednesday or Thursday, and my father and uncle took them up on it. My friend Gabriel, who had been planning to attend the Open on Tuesday night, only to be rained out, bought a special $20 grounds pass on Wednesday and saw a whole lot of tennis. With all the rain, the USTA must have taken a bath, no pun intended, at this year’s tournament. I think the organization did well to try to accommodate disappointed fans.
Remarkably, all four players in this match stayed back on their serves. What is more, when serving, the seventh seeds had their net player stand no more than two or three feet from the net, so the server was almost guaranteed to have to play the entire point, as all lobs became her responsibility. There were moments in the match when all four players were on the baseline. I stayed for the first six games, which featured three breaks of serve. After I left, Dechy and Zvonareva (presumably without any of Zvonareva’s famous tears) completed the upset, 7-5 6-3. In fact, they went on to win the event.
Court 7
Donald Young (United States) v. Greg Jones (Australia)
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