Eyewitness tennis is unreliable in the new Arthur Ashe Stadium, so I take the official scorer’s word that Lindsay Davenport’s winning shot against Jana Novotna was a forehand pass, cross court. From my view atop the 90-meter hill it could have been a lob or a spitball, and the two players could have been Betty Crocker and Kull the Conqueror, for all I could tell.
Trying to see tennis from the cheapest seat ($39 face value) in tennis’ newest house is really no harder than reading the obituaries from a water tower.
Had I only had a spare $85,000, I could have gone for a luxury suite with a wet bar, designer furniture and a butler.
But it still would have been Novotna-Davenport, with Greg Rusedski and Richard Krajicek to follow.
I did hear Davenport’s squeal of relief and surprise that she had made the women’s semis of the U.S. Open for the first time.
Joy is unmistakable, and louder than the interminable swop, sloob, swoosh of women’s tennis, whoever that was way down there.
Let me ask this of those intrepid folks who have climbed to the distant reaches of Comiskey Park for a baseball game: When your nose started bleeding, did you have to wait for a changeover to get a tissue?
The United States Tennis Association spent $254 million to build a new center court for the U.S. Open. Well, why not? Wimbledon just finished a fresh and fancy show court, the Australian Open’s facility is newer and even the French have rehabbed Roland Garros.
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America’s tennis conscience, Bud Collins, says the USTA is a victim of “penthouse envy.” I wish I had said it first.
The new stadium’s design is, ahem . . . distinctive, let’s say. From the outside, it looks like someone tried to fold a giant french-fry container into a pill box, so if style matters at all, those bizarre costumes of Andre Agassi (he chose pink in which to lose to Patrick Rafter) look right at home.
I don’t mean to be a cynic. From the inside, I was impressed that not every blank space is taken up by corporate logos, all of which can be seen from the highest seat.
It is the USTA’s money and they can spend it any way they want to, so if building an unnecessary and ill-suited arena to showcase America’s tennis tournament is what they think is best, well, you still can’t get a taxi back to Manhattan after a night match.
The stadium that was replaced, the one named after Louis Armstrong, the one where Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova would inspire howls and whoops from the rowdiest crowd at any Grand Slam, that place still sits where it always did, girder to girder next door, half used and perfectly fine for anything tennis needs to do.
The portable toilets are gone and the smell of frying fat is now much more dispersed, and there is a lot more room to eat your overpriced pasta without worrying about someone nudging your elbow so your fork ends up in your eye.
And, by the way, they don’t call it Louis Armstrong anymore. They call it Stadium 2. This is to distinguish it from Stadium 3, which used to be the Grandstand.
Arthur Ashe Stadium would have been Stadium 1 had there not been a public outcry to honor Ashe in some way.
What charm is lost in changing names to numbers is more than made up for because local guides are now encouraged to use more than a single finger when giving directions.
This has all been done for the future of tennis. That is the company line and they are sticking to it.
Ashe might have noted that if they were going to spend all those millions on architecture, maybe a better use of the money would be to develop the next generation of American tennis players.
The way it is now, you won’t be able to see who they are anyhow.