COST OF A STANDARD SWEATER AT THE U.S.OPEN: $290
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A RAFA MAKES: Ticket brokers were asking $750 a ticket for the Fed-Murray final. If it had been Fed-Nadal it would have been $3,000.
QUICK, CALL THE LAUNDROMAT POLICE: British gold-medal cyclist Jamie Staff, who spotted Rafa Nadal in the Olympic Village, shared this cautionary tale: “I was in the laundry and realized I was standing right next to Nadal. I didn’t bother him, but he was shoving all his colors and whites in together. I really wanted to say, ‘Dude, you’re going to have a nightmare with that. You can’t just put the whole bag in — there are reds in with whites.’ But what can you do?”
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UNITED AIRLINES AND MARDY FISH (WHO WILL SOON MARRY STACEY GARDNER, “SUITCASE NO. 2” ON DEAL OR NO DEAL): With United, suitcase No. 2 costs you 15 bucks. With Fish, we would speculate that his “Suitcase No. 2” cost him a tad more. (Just kidding, Mardy.)
IT’LL NEVER EVER HAPPEN, BUT: Can’t there be an automatic rule that Serena and Venus are put into opposite halves of the draw?
GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE OL’ PHRASE ‘DROPPED CALL’: Asked whether he had been in touch with his parents after his first-round win, Sam Querrey said, “I wanted to call them, but I just dropped my cell phone in the toilet.”
MORE TOILET TALK: The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane compared Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s pre-race warm-up to Nadal, “who hops up and down, before every match, like a small boy in need of a pee.”
EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD — CELEBRATE: The U.S. Open’s opening night gala, a salute to 40 years of Open tennis, came the night after the Olympics’ multi-zillion-dollar closing ceremonies. Plus, icons Andre, Steffi, Sampras, Connors, Henin and Clijsters were notably absent. But so what? The evening was a glistening celebration of a generation of champions. Brightest Hair: Becker. More Stunning Then Ever: Sabatini. Best Dressers: Fed and Sharapova. Biggest Round of Applause: Fed. Runners-Up: Billie Jean, the Ashe family, Chrissie, Roddick and, of course, Mac.
15,000 PERFORMERS, A $300 MILLION BUDGET, THREE YEARS IN THE MAKING AND THREE BILLION VIEWERS (THAT’S ABOUT 40 PERCENT OF HUMANITY): The Olympic Opening Ceremony was an awe-inspiring hi-tech display of mass culture, communal discipline and tableau art. Okay, there was lip-synching, phony fireworks and an 800-pound gorilla inside the stadium (think “re-education centers,” harsh displacement, a post-Stalinist authoritarian state and repression, Tibet, and even-worse-than-L.A. pollution). Still, it was an inspirational night like few others, a moment of emergence of one of the world’s oldest and greatest cultures and a marker of a future we are just learning to grasp.
SPEAKING OF CELEBRATIONS: In the Beijing opening ceremonies, Rafa glowed with unfettered glee. Swiss flag carrier Federer offered a contained smile, but after winning the doubles gold, he displayed a curious gesture (as if he was peeling the aura of his prone partner Stan Wawrinka) and then, like some giddy kid frolicking in a sandbox, rolled on top of his partner. BTW: IOC Prez Jacques Rogge said it was his favorite moment in Beijing…After Venus beat Serena to win Wimby, she was contained. But after the sisters won the Olympics, Venus unleashed her best vertical victory leap since winning Wimby in ‘07. Serena explained: “The Olympics is about having your moment in time. It’s unexplainable. I have chill bumps.”
PAST HER BEDTIME: First Serena said she didn’t want to stay in the Olympic Village because, “I like my privacy. I don’t always want people around me.” Then she added she was just too tired to attend the opening ceremonies, “because I get sleepy at 7 p.m. I like to go to sleep really early…I was in a foul mood by the time 5 p.m. came around, so it just wasn’t worth it.”
SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO US: The L.A. Times’ Bill Dwyre wrote, “Tennis in the Olympics is your Uncle Herbie at the formal wedding in Crocs.”
PHOTOSHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP: Reflecting on how Beijing compared to other Olympics, SI’s Selena Roberts opined, “This is not Athens, where activists left their thoughts in graffiti. This is not Sydney, where revelers of all nations gathered in the harbor area to join the Aussies in cheers of ‘OI, OI, OI.’ In Beijing, graffiti has been scrubbed from the walls, with an entire city looking as if it’s been Photoshopped”…Advertisers and other Western corporate titans make a living crafting their versions of reality, but in Beijing they’ve been beaten at their own game. Chinese authorities cede no ground, not for anyone.”
THIS IS SPORTS, NOT BALLET: During a Blake match, the ump warned the zealously intense J-Block, “Your enthusiasm is amazing, but please be respectful.” James defended his fans, saying, “It’s sports. You’re supposed to go after someone. There’s supposed to be tense moments. You’re supposed to scream. All of a sudden, if there’s a net and rackets involved, you can’t do that?”
THIS IS SPORTS, NOT BERLITZ: Reflecting on an initiative that will require LPGA pros to be able to speak decent English by the end of ‘09, Jelena Jankovic, who’s fluent in Serbian and English, said, “We’re foreigners, and we’re athletes. My language is Serbian. This is not a language school.” BTW: Scott Ostler reported that ‘hello’ in Mandarin is pronounced “knee-how,” but while in Beijing his version of the greeting included “knee-hi,” “how now,” “tally ho” “ho-hum,” “who knew” and “say hey.”
THE GREAT WALL OF ZHENG: Frustrated by the consistency of China’s Jie Zheng, Jankovic muttered in frustration, “Chinese Wall? What is this?”
NOW HERE’S AN IDEA THAT’S SUDDENLY OUT OF FASHION: Johnette Howard suggested that “Federer’s ‘08 conquerors now number so many, they almost deserve a T-shirt of their own. Maybe, ‘Honk If You’ve Beaten Roger, Too.’”
FED-NADAL ANALYSIS OF THE MONTH: Harvey Araton noted that “Nadal methodically wore out Federer in the spring and in the summer sapped his belief in strokes that were magical for four and a half years. Nadal would spot Federer a break of serve, sometimes two, and still win the set. He had an attitude of defiance, an air of indefatigability, and that is why the most startling tennis sight of all in 2008 came Sunday [in the semis], when Nadal bent over after a long rally that ended with a Murray volley into the open court, setting up a match point. How strange and, yes, sad it was to see Nadal so spent…”
THE FOUR WORDS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR AT THE OPEN IN QUEENS: “It’s raining in Brooklyn.”
US OPEN ROCKS: This year’s U.S. Open was the biggest and most successful in 40 years, as revenue, attendance, website traffic, and concession sales hit all-time highs. A new all-time attendance record of more than 720,000 fans topped last year’s record. Ashe Stadium was sold to a record 99 percent of capacity for the first time, with 23 of 26 sessions sold out. Attendance climbed by 100,00 over five years ago. “We’ve turned the corner,” said Arlen Kantarian, CEO Pro Tennis, USTA. “This year’s record-setting Open was the ultimate convergence of sports, celebrity, business and entertainment. The Open has become the most exciting and trendiest event in sports and entertainment, and once you achieve that, you are good to ride for a few years. It’s no longer a matter of any given player, it’s now a must see event and a great time with family. That’s what we achieved more than anything. The U.S. Open is now less dependant on U.S. champions. We’re thrilled to see attendance go up in the midst of a challenging economy.” The women’s final rating was up 57 percent vs. last year, and was the highest since ‘02. CBS’s ratings for the men’s semis was up 16 percent vs. last year. Total visits to USOpen.org (which featured Inside Tennis’ Matt Cronin writing and on radio, increased 33 percent.
‘THE DAY WILL COME WHEN I CAN SIT IN THAT BIG-BOY SEAT’: Mary Carillo told The New York Times that, “In sports, it’s hard for a woman to sit in the big-boy chair. Television sports are still…the last bastion of machismo. And there is definitely…[in] football and baseball, an attitude that a woman has no business in the booth doing play-by-play because women do not traditionally grow up playing those sports. But tennis is a little different; I’d like to think the day will come when I can sit in that big-boy chair for my sport.”
OH TO’VE BEEN A MOSQUITO ON THAT WALL: Roddick reportedly confronted Djokovic over their feud relating to the Serb’s many, real or imagined, injuries.
KISS THE COOK: Martha Stewart said that if she could make dinner for any tennis player it would be Nadal or James Blake, and she would make them anything they wanted… Okay, it was just revealed that the late, great TV chef Julia Childs was a U.S. spy during WWII, but so was the late Alice Marble, who supposedly romanced her former lover, a Swiss banker, in order to obtain Nazi financial data.
OUR FAVORITE SEMINAR AT THE USTA TEACHERS CONFAB: Dude, Your Warm-Up Activities Are Lame, Try These, presented by Mike Carter.
WOULD THAT POSSIBLY BE BECAUSE YOU ARE OLD AND OUT OF SHAPE?: Our second-favorite seminar at the conference: The Virtues of Hitting The Ball Late.
POLITICAL QUIZ: Does John McEnroe’s dad have a chance of landing the ATP CEO job he’s campaigning for? (He’s against equal prize money, says players shouldn’t be required to play any events and is for a merger with the WTA.) Or will WTA chief Larry Scott emerge to head both the WTA or ATP, or none of the above?
LOVE COUPLE: When IT asked NBC icon Tom Brokaw who would be a good mixed doubles partner for Sarah Palin, he said “John McEnroe, the two of them can both rip the bark off a tree.”
ROBINSON, ASHE, JORDAN, TIGER, OBAMA: Frank Deford contended that a significant factor that led to the current atmosphere in which an African-American has emerged as a candidate for president, was the “esteem surrounding the black man in sport … the way the black athlete has evolved in the public mind has made him something of a precursor for African-Americans in other visible fields…[This] comfort factor…must have eased the path for Obama voters.” Deford added that Obama reminded him “more of Ashe than anyone in his own business.” Ashe’s widow, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe sounded a similar theme. Asked who on the scene most conveyed the spirit and sensibility of her late husband. She said, “This is a risky answer, but I have to tell you… I would say we’ve got him [in Barack Obama] if we could just get him into office. He has just the tolerance and patience and peace that we need.” Asked if she thought Ashe would vote for Obama, she replied, “I wonder about that all the time. I think he would pull the lever 10 times if he could.”
WHERE’S ALI FROM AMSTERDAM? The L.A. Times’ Kurt Streeter noted that the Open featured five top players of color — the Williames, Blake, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils — “But there are 251 others in the singles draws…[and] only a thin slice of those 251 players are non-white. It’s not just a lack of African-Americans …Where are the Afro-Brazilians, the guys we see on the soccer pitch, the dark-skinned South and Central Americans of native descent?…Will we ever see a kid from Amsterdam named Ali make it to the top 10?”
TIME FOR HAL TO TAKE OVER?: After Marat Safin was called for a foot-fault at crunch time by a linesperson from the far side of the court, John McEnroe said it was “absurd, pathetic. That’s why we should just get computers and get rid of these guys.”
A HAWK-EYE THEORY THAT RINGS TRUE: Some claim that one-third of the challenges players make are right, another third of the time they are wrong and a third of the time players are just frustrated over a missed shot or just want to catch their breath.
BATTLE OF THE STREAKS: Just when you figured out which streak was better — the Williams family winning Wimbledon, the Olympic dubs and the U.S. Open, and Serena becoming No. 1 or Rafa winning the French, Wimbledon, the Olympic gold and becoming No. 1 — you realize you forgot some lad named Roger who’s performed pretty decently over the past five years.
OLDIE BUT GOLDIE: On three different occasions after Fed won an Open match, the P.A. system blasted, We’re Still Having Fun, And You’re Still the One.
THAT’S ALL: According to one broadcaster, “In Scotland they think Andy Murray’s walking on water and healing the sick.”
COURAGE IN OUR TIMES: Brit Murray continually says the U.S. Open is his favorite tournament.
TIP OF THE MONTH: Marat Safin said that if his younger sister Dinara Safina does “everything opposite of what I’ve been doing throughout the years she will be No. 1 in the world for a long time.” Dinara seemed to concur, saying, “When he plays his best, I would take everything he has … When he plays his worst game, then I don’t need anything.”
THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF GETTING A NOTE FROM YOUR MOTHER: Next year the WTA will have a requirement that in order not to be suspended, a player who skips a big tournament will have to make a promotional effort in the market where the tournament is held.
ATP CLEARS DAVYDENKO: The ATP has concluded its seemingly interminable investigation into an August ‘07 match in Sopot, Poland between world No. 6 Nikolay Davydenko and Argentinean journeyman Martin Vassallo Arguello, during which irregular betting patterns (which stretched into millions of dollars) and Davydenko’s sudden collapse gainst a much lower-ranked player raised red flags. The investigation, which encompassed everything from interviews to phone records, found no evidence of foul play.
FASHION FILE: As for fashion, this year’s Open was the least adventurous in memory.
RUSSIAN ROULETTE: With a gold-silver-bronze showing by Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina and Vera Zvonareva, Russia became the first country to sweep an Olympic tennis event since Britain in 1908. (Nadia Petrova and Maria Kirilenko simultaneously swept the singles and doubles in Cincy, giving the Russians 5 remarkable results on a single day.)
‘TIS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL POP QUIZ OF THE MONTH: Is Chilean Fernando Gonzalez, who has won gold, silver and bronze medals over the last two Olympics, a Summer Games overachiever or an underachiever on the tour?
GONZO-GATE: The hullabaloo over the James Blake-Fernando Gonzalez Olympic showdown spread from Beijing to New York. Trailing 8-9 in the final set of their semi, Blake attempted a passing shot that replays revealed probably grazed Gonzalez’s racket before sailing long. Despite Blake’s protest, Gonzalez won the point and went on to win the match. Blake, who all week had been singing the praises of the Olympics, said it was “a disappointing way to exit…when you not only lose the match, but you lose a little faith in your fellow competitor.” But in New York, Gonzo insisted it he didn’t feel the ball hit his racket and therefore had nothing to apologize for. “There are 200 points in a match and they are only talking about one,” he told IT. “I was really tired after a three-hour match. Almost you don’t feel your legs, you don’t feel your body…He was shocked because he lost three match points. He’s the one with the problem. I have nothing to say about it.” “Yeah, it’s not my problem anymore either,” replied Blake. “Whatever gets him to sleep at night is fine.”
TO EACH HIS OWN: One U.S. Open security guard by the locker room revealed he was a Wall Street banker and “did” the Open just to be by the players. On the other hand, another guard quipped after Federer got a Lexus for winning, “Give me that thing, it’s my birthday tomorrow”…While Federer is the toast of the town in New York, his sister is back home in Switzerland tending her garden.
MEDIA ‘QUERREY’ OF THE MONTH: A reporter asked L.A.’s media-savvy Sam Querrey, “First, earlier this year, you won the Tennis Channel Open. Then at Indy, you talked about how important it was for you to get airtime on ESPN and today you were on CBS. Media-wise, what’s next for you? CNN or…?”
POSSIBLY THE WORST FIGHTER IN THE GAME: Richard Gasquet.
ALMOST FAMOUS LONG AGO: Vet Vince Spadea said he was “the guy who attended the cocktail parties with the best of them throughout generations, which is kind of cool. I played the Samprases and Agassis, the Federers and Nadals and the Roddicks. There’s always that player who is almost famous…I got my tales and I’ve lived a version of the fairytale…Caviar dreams.”
SOCIAL BLOG: Becker is engaged to his former manager Axel Meyer-Woelden’s daughter, Sandy. Boris has known her since she was an infant and she is the ex-girlfriend of fellow German Tommy Haas… Ashley Harkleroad is pregnant.
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE: Divorce is heartbreaking under virtually any circumstance. But the dissolution of the marriage of former James Bond star George Lazenby and Pam (“she’s done so much for tennis”) Shriver, with all its below-the-belt accusations of wretched behavior, could become the nastiest tennis split since McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal. It’s gotten so bad even Lazenby’s socialite daughter got into the fray. Detailing decades of abuse by her dad, she urged a judge to deny him custody of his three young kids in part because she alleged he once pointed a gun at her when she got back home late and once, as a punishment, flushed punished her head in a toilet.”
JUSTIN UPDATE: Reflecting on his recent fall from grace and being replaced by John McEnroe as a USTA spokesperson, Justin Gimelstob told The New York Times, “I said of a bunch of sexist and stupid things, and I understand anybody’s decision to fire me. But to see McEnroe’s shriveled head superimposed on my body with my lines — it really breaks my heart.” He added, in a rather problematic manner, that “Hey, it’s not easy to always be the say-it-like-it-is guy and not have a hard time not going too far.” BTW: Kudos to Justin (the peacemaker) for wisely stepping in between the fiery John McEnroe and the not-exactly-mellow Mashona Washington after Mac got on Mashona’s case big-time during a WTT match.
STAT STUFF: Dinara Safina became the first woman to beat three reigning No. 1’s in one year…A new metric to indicate the state of tennis participation has been devised by the USTA and TIA. Six factors tracked from ‘03 to ‘07 show an increase of 10.8 percent — indicating that tennis has grown on a variety of fronts. Some facts: The number of players in ‘07 grew to 25.1 million. Also, unit sales of youth rackets grew 80 percent from ‘03 to ‘07.
ROOF, ROOF: A USTA feasibility study is proceeding on the possibility of a $100 million lightweight roof for Ashe Stadium. Arlen Kantarian said having a roof is “now a question of when, not if.”
WE ARE ALL ICELANDERS: At the USTA semi-annual meeting, an official proclaimed, “You would have to have been a ward of the country of Iceland if you haven’t heard of our slogan: “Future Ready.”
PRESSROOM REQUEST OF THE TOURNAMENT: “Will a representative of WowWow TV please report to Player Information, please?”
THIS AND THAT: The three times Serena has beaten Venus in a major, she has won the title…Ashe’s daughter Camera is studying Art History at Hunter College in Manhattan…USTA membership has increased in 30 of the last 31 months.
THE GREATEST TIDE OF HUMANITY IN AMERICAN TENNIS: The seemingly endless incoming night crowd at Ashe Stadium that has been waiting, due to a long-lasting afternoon session, for an hour or two to get into their seats.
THE POTENTIAL OF SPORTS TO HEAL AND REFORM: The N.Y Times’ William C. Rhoden compared Arthur Ashe’s generation with the current generation, saying that “Ashe’s was defined by struggle and protest, [while this] younger generation, which has had so much given and so much at its disposal, has lost sight of this greater good, of a sense of purpose. For the current generation, the greater good has been narrowly redefined in individual terms. The potential of sports to heal and reform has been lost.”
PUTTING IT ALL INTO PERSPECTIVE: When Andy Murray was eight, he hid under the headmaster’s desk at his grade school in Dunblane, Scotland, as a gun-toting invader killed 16 kids, a teacher and then himself.
