The U.S. Open is a mediocre sporting spectacle, and I can’t get enough of it
I am sweating. Andreas Seppi is sweating even more. At around 5 p.m. the sun roasts everyone in the grandstands on Court 5 in the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. After losing a narrow first set tiebreak, Seppi suddenly has a huge chance to steal the second set off big-serving American Sam Querrey. On break point, Seppi drags a Querrey second serve back into the court and Querrey misses. The folks in the crowd, rooting hard for an American victory, suddenly realize that this whole enterprise might've been as ill-planned as Querrey's second serve placement.The oppressive heat is choking the life from this tournament. Querrey himself will retire from the match because his forehand cramped so much he couldn't hold his racquet.
There were eight retirements on the men's side in the first round. For those who finished their matches, the day was filled with bagels and breadsticks as exhausted players imploded constantly. The tennis, especially in the matches played during the day, is mostly awful. For all that slow hardcourts have done to make matches entertaining and filled with long rallies, they completely sap the life from a tennis tournament played at temperatures over 90 degrees. Remember that Monfils/Djokovic match in Australia? Now add humidity, exponentially worse air pollution, constant crashes from nearby construction, honking horns and a steady stream of jet engines flying directly overhead to Laguardia—the worst airport in the world.
After playing a non-stop schedule since January, the remnants of the ATP and WTA are sleepwalking through the first round. Halep, Murray, Djokovic, and even the indomitable Rafael Nadal have all looked uncomfortable and exhausted. And yet the heat feels right. That everlasting sense of malformed exhaustion and the weight of lactic acid feels fair. In a decade that will be defined by American avarice, two scorching days in its premier tennis tournament feels like a thoroughly deserved middle finger from Mother Nature.
It’s so bad.
It would be one thing if this year's iteration of American avarice had been bathed in something resembling a professional light. But professionalism is dead in this country, and it's easy to see the raw sewage leaking into every facet of public and private life. For example, as we walk from the ugly chop shops and urban decay that surround Queens, we get a glance at the U.S. Open program. The U.S. Open program cover looks designed by a five-year-old with Adobe Illustrator. There's so little going on in this design. I get where the U.S. Open is coming from; minimalism, after all, looks sharp. But a centered tennis ball and some bad handwriting is not minimalism, it's pure laziness. The new US Open logo (above), also designed to look trendy and "modern," also comes off as amateurish.
Is this a joke?
I get it. It's a sans-serifed era and an age where gelatinous masses like that flaming tennis ball can be legitimized. It also sucks. But again, it's hard to feel that this tournament and this reality deserves anything better.Mixing sports and geopolitics is, of course, a dangerous path. For a sport like professional tennis, a distant third or fourth in terms of popularity in Europe and an intelligentsia-beloved-and-that's-about-it sport in America, you cannot make any general conclusions about anything from a tennis tournament. But in an America that has never been more obsessed with entertainment, an America divided along two sports teams play-acting as political entities, an America with a rhythmic contempt for anything you can imagine, this Very Large tennis tournament in Flushing does not feel like an escape from anything. There's no doubt it's supposed to be an escape. The hundreds of thousands of people who will attend this Very Large tennis tournament surely disagree with me on that point. But for me, the American-ness of this spectacle is suffocating.
The enjoyment feels ersatz and the marketing feels forced and dated. No country on earth is more pre-occupied with its Next Gen of tennis and anointing new stars, even if that means plastering posters of Caroline Dolehide (lost to Witthoëft in straights) or Mackie McDonald (blew a 2-0 lead to Robin Haase). No other country is quicker to abandon its new blood either, as seen by the lack of respect for "has-beens" like Taylor Townsend, Donald Young and Ryan Harrison. It's puzzling because you cannot physically see anything that's wrong in society at the U.S. Open and yet the overwhelming feeling that things have gone awry is present even as the USTA invests in opulent new stadia. Arthur Ashe, now with a bloated roof that looks vaguely dystopian in the hazy early afternoon, is impersonal and mausoleum-esque during the day session. Only Serena Williams is able to muster any sense of atmosphere on Monday. Federer repeats the feat on Tuesday, but that's basically it.
Maybe it's because it's so fucking hot. It's hard to visit New York City and not feel like a cockroach, but today is especially pestilent. It's hot enough that I'm beginning to lose my grip on reality. I've also been staring at a very small green object since noon and pretending to take notes for a blog post. All I can think about is how the other three Slams must be better than this. There are not enough bathrooms here. There are not enough water fountains, and the dual water fountains that do function often don't work simultaneously. Melbourne has three beautiful roofed courts and a competent graphic design team. It's also not humid and not in an inaccessible corner of New York City. Roland Garros is probably equally bad as the U.S. Open in terms of conditions, but at least the clay tends to be somewhat watchable. Plus it's "skippable," in a way that the U.S. Open is not, and skippability is a precious commodity these days. And Wimbledon is Wimbledon. But this Very Important Tennis Tournament has never felt more like an obligation, especially compared to the Oracle-backed splendor of Indian Wells or the crisp grass at Wimbledon. The fans mill like impertinent goats around the grounds. The aura of upper middle class distraction dwarfs any baseball game.
"The rule is, we only stay at a match for 20 minutes," I hear someone shout. If you look at any of the outside courts on ESPN+, you'll see an endless parade of people moving around and doing anything but paying attention to tennis matches. I'm sure this is a common occurrence at all tennis tournaments, but the heat and need for hydration has caused an increased level of total chaos on every single court. Later in the day, a huge mob of fans dawdle in the interstitial zone between the Robredo/Tsitsipas match and Johnson/Istomin. It's really loud, no one is paying full attention, and the crowd constantly shifts and moves between whichever match is more interesting. 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas, a rising star in professional tennis, finally loses his shit in the second set, cursing out a fan for talking during his service motion. Tsitsipas, who posts YouTube vlogs about his career and Tweets about his feelings, is usually a pretty cool customer, so the rant comes off as somewhat hilarious.
If players aren't falling over due to heat exhaustion, they are getting ground to dust (or disinterest) by these slow outdoor hardcourts. World No. 1 Simona Halep, who got straight-setted by Kaia Kanepi in the morning, certainly looked displeased at times. No. 16 seed Kyle Edmund looked physically ill in his shocking loss to Paolo Lorenzi. The old players are getting decimated. Youzhny, Leo Mayer, Ferrer, and Berankis all physically break down.
(This sure does look like the end of the line for the veritable old guard for men's tennis. Tsonga and Berdych are nowhere to be found. Muller, Youzhny, Ferrer, Benneteau and Florian Mayer are all playing their final Grand Slam tournament. These guys, who are forever in the Big Four's shadow, still managed to block an entire generation of young players for most of the 2010s. They will be missed. I also assume they will all wish they could've gotten their careers started just about now.)
Sara Sorribes Tormo won a grand total of seven points in her loss to Daria Gavrilova. Another double bagel came for Stefanie Voegele, who lost to Monica Puig in 46 efficient minutes. World No. 8 Grigor Dimitrov barely showed up to his match against Wawrinka on Ashe.Meanwhile, it seems like the U.S. Open courts get progressively slower every year. For the players actually moving athletically, it must feel like a prison to be out there with the 80 percent humidity and complete inability to hit a winner. On the court to the right of the Seppi/Querrey fiasco, Kathinka von Deichmann of Liechtenstein and Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine are grinding out a physically demanding match. I'm here with a friend I'll call Jack and his dad, and I'm pretty sure we're all tired of smelling sweat and repeatedly lining up to fill water bottles at the scattered drinking fountains in the park. If we're tired of it, that means von Deichmann and Kalinina, who don't have the benefit of massive serves nor the ability to close out point efficiently, are absolutely feeling the misery after an hour of long rallies. von Deichmann, who looks as fit as any 24-year-old Liechtenstiner, is suffering badly and cannot really get past Kalinina, who seems to have a chemical addiction to midcourt forehands down the middle and staying on the baseline. That'll do just fine on these courts. Despite winning the first set 6-1, von Deichmann would go on to lose the second set in a tiebreak and retire from the match down 2-5 in the third. This match is almost entirely inconsequential, but Jack's dad has been glued to every bruising 20-shot rally from our vantage point in the grandstand on Court 5. It's a trainwreck.
And yet, despite the chaotic absurdity of hosting this event in Flushing and the general miasma hanging over everything, no doubt influenced by both tours' struggles with star players not playing due to injury/pregnancy/drug suspension, or just being flat-out bad, I'm still unwilling to proclaim this "the worst Slam," without some popular survey or metric. I mean, the French Open is still probably the worst in terms of facilities and ability to host anything, so we can't go that far. But as a sporting event in the 21st century, it's basically impossible to take the U.S. Open seriously. There is no magnitude or tradition. The entertainment is thrown together haphazardly and served to you in a styrofoam box.
Take the new Armstrong Stadium, which has a completely different architectural design to the other stadiums. It's beautiful in certain respects, and the towering NBA-style seats provide a good view in the upper bowl, but it's not intimate or even that modernThere's really only one entrance and one side for staircases due to space constraints, and I highly doubt the general standing areas between the bowls will hold up if the stadium ever gets really crowded. My friend Jack compares the byzantine layout of the grounds and enormous crush of humanity to a poorly planned music festival. With the pavilions interspersed with food carts, ice cream stands, American Express booths handing out radios, Chase "Charge and Watch" stations, each with their own lines that snake into the crowd and create more difficulties, there is a constant sense of completely losing track of space as you desperately try to find the court to watch your Italian uncle Paolo Lorenzi try to eat a tennis ball before serving it for an ace. It feels like Lorenzi doesn't have any idea of space either as he skids around the court pretending it's a clay Challenger in southern Italy, but he's winning because it's so fucking hot and Kyle Edmund apparently doesn't know how to hydrate properly or is suffering from a long-term stomach virus.
Misery seems to be the byword as we abandon Querrey/Seppi and move to Grandstand to watch Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime. I've determined that if you're not trying to do anything related to tennis at the U.S. Open, you might be having a good time. There are plenty of air-conditioned shops, particularly in the new Louis Armstrong Stadium, and the numerous gourmet food options with small portion sizes offer a great way to waste time. But if you're trying to watch tennis, you must navigate the cramped confines of Flushing Meadows, try to find a seat, and then wait in enormous lines for all the smart people who are trying not to care about tennis for amenities. There's not enough shade anywhere. The expensive seats that are close to the good matches are off limits to most fans and are generally unoccupied in the early rounds, offering the regular fans a tantalizing look at a decent seat for hours. The big matches of the day are sparsely attended.
I've planned my only escape for the day by getting into the shaded section of the Shapo/Felix contest. I've promised Jack Duckworth and his dad that this should be the most entertaining match of the day. And it should be. How could the U.S. Open ruin the radiant Canadian lefty and his best buddy, Felix Auger-Aliassime, the next clay superstar, the actual boy with the sweetest two-hander in the under-20 set. Here, surrounded by real tennis fans who are not watching the Kelly Clarkson performance, we are treated to...absolute dogshit in the first set. The two youngsters are stupidly tight and combine for 33 unforced errors to just 10 winners in the first set. Felix goes up 5-3, double faults a game away while serving for the first set, and loses it 5-7. After that, Shapovalov starts dominating and goes up a double break. The quality of tennis improves greatly, including this absurd point:
But Shapovalov does that thing where he goes up a double break and loses the set anyway. Felix plays well enough to get even and then really turns it on to break Shapo's serve at 5-7 after Shapo barely misses and commits another error. Except that Shapovalov, who is walking to the chair and taking off his shirt, has actually caught the baseline after he rage-challenged the call. Felix brings up another set point anyway and this time Shapovalov misses wide. He rage challenges yet again, but the set is over. The match is getting really good now and both Jack and Jack's dad are committed to staying for the duration of the match.
Of course, the U.S. Open is not here to indulge in my fantasies of a good time. Felix starts looking extremely fatigued in the fourth set and is forced to retire. With his history of heart issues, it's pretty darn scary, and yet another testament to the dangerous conditions. Felix is in tears and Shapovalov gives him a huge hug before they leave the court. However, this leaves me with precious few options, tennis-wise. We don't have passes for Ashe to watch Serena obliterate Magda Linette. We don't want to watch Donald Young. We are left with watching the fourth and fifth sets of Ryan Harrison and Kevin Anderson on Court 17. We arrive and take excellent seats on Court 17. Court 17 is, for my money, the best place to watch tennis at the U.S. Open. Instead of a mammoth stadium, Court 17 is an intimate amphitheater with open seating. It usually has better matches than Courts 4-6 and is right next to a slightly less crowded food area. We arrive just in time to watch Harrison close out the third set to go up 2-1.
It's now about 8:30 p.m. and the day could now finally be described as "bearable" with the lights on and the humidity starting to dissipate. I must admit that I didn't have high hopes for Harrison/Anderson given that Kevin Anderson and Ryan Harrison were both involved, but damn was this match somehow compelling. Harrison decided to play out of his mind to go up 2-1, returning with precision and flummoxing Anderson with a series of ludicrous dropshots and stop volleys. Anderson, ailing physically and dealing with the weight of defending a final (and being Kevin Anderson), looked just about finished at the start of the fourth set.Kevin Anderson has had the weirdest tennis career in recent memory. He wasn't a particularly awe-inspiring junior nor good enough for The Show immediately, which meant he spent several years at Illinois destroying Big Ten tennis and simultaneously stunting his career path. He never became an NCAA singles champion like Steve Johnson. He lost the deciding NCAA Team Championship match to...John Isner of Georgia. Then he went pro and spent another year in the Challengers before finally breaking into the tour. After numerous high-profile chokes in majors and injury issues, he bloomed as late as you possibly can in professional tennis. He made his first Grand Slam semifinal at last year's US Open before making the final itself and losing to Nadal. He beat Roger Federer (and Isner) at Wimbledon and made another Slam final in 2018. It's really incredible.
Anderson is a hard player to root for. Although he's ostensibly American and is a permanent resident of Florida, he still reps South Africa, thereby becoming the best African tennis player of all-time despite being...you know...Kevin Anderson: Boring White Guy. His game is built around a massive serve and is fairly dull when he's clicking. His on-court demeanor, filled with "come ons," slow serving, and obsessive picking at his shirt, is sometimes maddening. However, tonight, it's downright pleasant compared to Ryan Harrison's nonstop bitching at the chair umpire, line judges, crowd, box and the invisible ghosts that he talks to in between points.Harrison is really making Anderson play though, exchanging huge baseline rallies and serving with crazy accuracy. The fourth set seems to be destined for a breaker when Anderson pulls out one of the best return games I've ever seen. He gets it to 15-all with a beautiful forehand winner, plants a return on the baseline that Harrison lets go for no reason. After bringing up two break points with a backhand winner, he finished the game off with a stunning net approach and volley that gives him a 5-3 lead. He serves out the fourth set with ease.
I realize I am pulling for Anderson because you can so clearly see where he's had to work at his game. He's 6-foot-8 and moves with as much grace as Alexander Zverev, something that wasn't the case earlier in his career. He has had so many big collapses and mental blocks that he has resorted to an agonizingly repetitive series of pump-up routines and habits to keep himself focused. He's drastically improved his backhand, learning to place it and make it an offensive shot, which is unheard of for one of the classic American-style servebots. He grunts a little bit every time he hits the ball, which is inaudible on television but rings through Court 17 as the match gets tenser and tenser.
In the fifth, both players save break chances in the first two games of the match. Harrison is also in full flow, showing off his Grand Slam doubles skills with ridiculous volleys and impossible slices from the back of the court. He has the crowd behind him, who are of course shouting "USA! USA!" whenever possible. Anderson has a small contingent who start an "RSA! RSA!" chant, but they are quickly shouted down. But Harrison cracks first. He loses serve at 2-2 after another blistering series of points from Anderson, who looks completely unbeatable as he consolidates and prepares to serve for the match. The match reaches a fever pitch as the crowd gives Harrison a huge lift.It is here that the old Kevin Anderson returns. After going up 30-0, he hits a first serve at 116 mph, 14 mph slower than his average of 130. It barely clears the net, bouncing harmlessly on his side of the net and setting Harrison up for a brilliant return off a tentative second serve that forces Anderson out of position and allows Harrison to dictate the point and force a mistake that leaves Anderson in big trouble. Another first serve misses. Harrison wins another point after a gruesome rally and makes it 30-all. Kevin Anderson hits another 115 mph first serve that goes halfway up the net and is rapidly collected by the ballboy, who I swear gives a tragic, halfhearted glance at Anderson as the South African steadies himself to hit a second serve that everyone in the stadium knows is fated to also not clear the net and set up an inevitable break back point for Harrison. The crowd erupts. Anderson picks at both sides of his shirt again. He's picked at his shirt so much the sleeves are crumpled at the top. Anderson, aware of the serve clock, stands with his legs a solid two feet apart in his ready position and bounces the ball. He pauses. He takes nearly all the time in the shot clock before landing his first, except that because it's Kevin Anderson the serve is an unimaginative body serve that Harrison expertly returns to the South African's backhand. The only possible shot for Anderson is an awkward backhand winner from just inside the court, but with the interminable luck of an Actually Good Tennis Player that he has somehow picked up during his years of inconsistency, he manages to flick the backhand down the line and save the break point. A big serve brings up match point, but Harrison gets into the rally and hits a brilliant series of groundstrokes into the corner. Anderson drags his tired legs into the net, but Harrison is ready for the half volley and hits a ridiculous lob that goes over Anderson's head and lands just in time for Kevin to slap a backhand into the bottom of the net. The entire crowd rises in applause, which Harrison thoroughly deserves because Jesus Christ that shot was insane, one of those crazy things that only the professionals can pull off while match point down. You can see Harrison, who will always be full of unfulfilled promise that is painfully trickling through his racquet and into the ATP Rankings—he wants this so fucking badly and his voice has reached full American bass-baritone pitch as he shouts "COME ON!" and spurs the crowd to cheer him on. Of course, now that Kevin Anderson is an Actually Good Tennis Player and not someone desperately Wanting to Be an Actually Good Tennis Player, he rips a serve to bring up another match point. Harrison bosses the rally off the first serve return and easily retrieves it to deuce. But Anderson, now showing the interminable brilliance of an Actually Good Tennis Player, hits a 139 mph ace down the T that catches the line perfectly. Harrison, in his typical bitchy way, puts his hands on his hips and motions for the Hawkeye guys up in the booth to use his final challenge of the day, which fails. Match point again. Seconds later, an inevitable Anderson second serve jams Harrison's backhand and ends the match after 4 hours and 18 minutes.
Yeah, I guess that part of the U.S. Open was pretty good. It's still tennis, after all.
