World’s Best Racquets in New York
Sloane Stephens was favored to win the first match of the evening session of the U.S. Open, a major event in New York City’s sports calendar. She played in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the world’s largest tennis venue with a capacity of just under 24,000. Ticket prices start at about $50 dollars and go up, way up, depending on where you want to sit and which day over the fortnight you choose to make the scene.
These sessions rank with opening nights at Lincoln Center and World Series games at Mets Stadium, which is across the street, I mean the tracks. The mighty No. 7 subway stops at Mets-Willets Point: turn left for the ball game, right for the racquet game. The proper name of Mets Stadium is Citi Field, but if you pay close attention, you may hear some old fogeys referring to it as Shea Stadium, which was torn down to make way for Citi Field in 2008.
Sloane Stephens won the U.S. Open women’s singles championship in 2017, and Coco Gauff won last year, but no American man has won since Andy Roddick in 2003. For comparison, the Mets last won the National League pennant in 2015; the World Series, not in any man’s living memory, except I suppose mine or Mr. Pleszczynski’s or Mr. Thornberry’s.
If things get slow at the Open, you can amble over to the Mets side and watch a few innings for a handful of dollars, though not for the better seats, which are still competitive with the big tennis stadia, Ashe and Louis Armstrong, both of which were recently renovated and roofed in case of foul weather. However, things never are slow at the tennis tournament, not long enough to stir the old call to the ballgame, which anyway will come again for several more weeks. The Mets are six games out, not that it really matters, and if you do not like it, you can go to another borough and watch the Yankees, who will make the playoffs for sure and then pennant, why not.
Meanwhile, there is always a match that beats a record for duration, like Dan Evans–Karen Khachanov on the second day: five and a half hours. That was enough for two ballgames, but this was unusual. And there will surely be a great run by an unseeded unknown, and an inspiring victory owed to grit and clutch and youthful energy. So you stick around and watch and contribute by your presence to what has been a fantastic success by the Open’s owner, the U.S. Tennis Association. The large staff at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows keeps the enormous crowds happy and generally courteous, despite the admitted crush. This year, they are experimenting with letting people take their seats between games rather than at changeovers, which is a shocking breach of tradition but seems to work, and still there are fans standing three rows deep from over the fences on the outside courts and the walkways on the “minor” stadia, and not complaining. That is civility as we always knew it in New York. New Yorkers return the favor by continuing to show up and break attendance records. There were some 70,000 people at the Billie Jean Tennis Center on opening day (and evening).
The racquet extravaganza that closes the year’s major (or Slam) circuit will receive close to a million visitors over the three weeks. (The first is for the qualifying rounds and includes free events sort of like a fair, with gay pride music bands and exotic cuisine and kids’ activities.) There were 950,000 last year, and all indications are that there will be more this year, with the stadia seats just about sold out already for every session and the ground passes selling like hotcakes. I have not actually seen any of those, but there is plenty of food, maybe somewhat overpriced, but the fans look pretty well heeled, though they get louder than at the other majors. New Yorkers have a bad rap where manners are concerned, and it is unfair, they are really as nice and helpful as most Americans are, still.
There are objective, fair and accurate reasons for liking Sloane Stephens, who was unseeded here when she lifted the trophy seven years ago. She has had that kind of career since her start in 2009: she is always a contender, but she goes up and down in the rankings. This year has not been up to her expectations; she won the Rouen Open in April. That’s fine but modest. She was expected to win in the first round, having beaten opponent Clara Burel in their single previous meeting, and she got ahead quickly — 6-0 in the first set.
But in tennis, as in so many other things, you never count your chickens — or your hotcakes, or your bagels, as a shutout score is called in a set of tennis — until you really have them. Down 0–4 in the second set, Burel came back. It was quite a show of grit and determination, and on the other side of the net, one of these collapses Sloane fans have seen before: the deep forehand flying past the lines or into the net, the fast feet not helping, the stonewall defense cracking, and the sense of doom increasing with each lost game. She was good about it, as she always is. “… heartbreaking,” she posted, “… but this is the beginning of the comeback … Onward and upward!”
An attitude that should inspire the Mets!
It was a strong match, with much more drama than the one that followed, though that one, between Novak Djokovic, who is coming off a gold medal win in singles at the Paris Olympics, and Moldova’s only tennis player, Radu Albot, who won at Delray Beach once and has the determined nature of a very good player who cannot quite make it to the top rankings. This year, he was below the top 100, so he had to win three matches in the qualifiers. Djokovic beat him in straight sets, to no one’s surprise, following the Stephens–Burel shocker. Djokovic, the last member of a class that dominated the sport for close to two decades, is still No. 2 and, knee surgery in June notwithstanding, he is expected to reach the finals. He is the defending champion.
A defending champion has more reason to expect a deep run than a former champion, of course, as Stephens’ disappointment demonstrates. Another past champion, British darling Emma Raducanu, champion in 2021, fell in her opening match to American darling Sofia Kenin, herself the 2020 winner at the Australian Open. Trivia, really: you look at the present, you look to the future. Tradition matters, but life is forward, a banality but a true lesson in sports and why they have such a hold on our imagination. And the show goes on.
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