Archive for September, 2010
High Line Garden, a "Great West Side Story!"
NEW YORK – The reign’s in Spain now, falling mightily and mainly on the crowned head of Roundhouse Rafa.
Spain, of course, has a king, Juan Carlos I, with a palace in Madrid. A good fellow, we’re told. But the real monarch today is young Rafa I, whose roundhouse knockout punches on a tennis court are massive left hooks that leave no doubt of his being No. 1 in his world-circling profession. continue reading »
September 14 2010 | US Open | 10 Comments »
Entrance to USTA grounds
NEW YORK – At 6 minutes before 7, as evening descended on Roger Federer yesterday, he picked up his rackets and bag, raised a plaintive hand of so-long to the witnesses and was gone from the US Open.
Gone? Roger Federer on his way home? But there he was, headed for the door. This wasn’t supposed to happen at a tennis court called Arthur Ashe Stadium, but was really a cauldron. A madhouse as a kid from a sliver of a country – Serbia – wrecked today’s final that everybody wanted: Federer against his chief rival, Rafa Nadal. continue reading »
September 11 2010 | US Open | 5 Comments »
New York, NY — The ghosts of New York’s Third Avenue will stay with me.
Detail of Guardian Angel Church on 10th Avenue
It was Black Tuesday, 12 days ago, and the ghosts were easily identified: those survivors able to walk away from the shambles of the World Trade Center – ashen apparitions, dirty-faced, smudged by debris, coated with the grime of tragedy. They were among those surging northward on clotted sidewalks, refugees marching to the unending threnody of sirens and the barking horns of fire trucks headed way downtown.
Anxious, but not acting panicked, they were fleeing the billowing cloud at the south end of the island, the mountain of smoke marring an otherwise clear azure sky.
Offices, schools, and apartments were emptying. When I encountered survivors, the horror of the day took on life and reality. continue reading »
September 11 2010 | Misc. Articles | 1 Comment »
View from Bryant Park
NEW YORK – Sometimes you lose, and it’s a win.
This happened to a couple of tennis wanderers you probably never heard of as they made a stopover at the US Open. The clouds shading Arthur Ashe Stadium yesterday were grimy and ominous, the breezes nippy, their chances in the doubles title bout a shot as long as either of them becoming a prime minister.
But what Rohan Bopanna of India and his Pakistani partner, Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, did in the gigantic playroom made their countries’ prime ministers sit up and take notice, and gladdened countless of their compatriots. Especially in Pakistan, enveloped in floods and numerous other woes. continue reading »
September 10 2010 | US Open | No Comments »
Night time dancing fountains in the South Plaza at the US Open
NEW YORK – Oldest game in the world?
That’s easy – mixed doubles on a tennis court.
I believe the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that Adam and Eve won the first Eden Open over a Hittite couple, using apples as balls. Apparently Eve ate some apples, causing Adam to scold her: “How can we play if you dine on the balls?” Then she stepped on a snake, a thoughtless foot fault deranging her game – much like Sister Serena’s melt-down eons later. continue reading »
September 10 2010 | US Open | No Comments »
Esther Vergeer serving
NEW YORK – One of these days she will not win the US Open. Maybe. But don’t count on it.
Just count on the wheeler-dealer of Flushing Meadows to ride the paved range like Annie Oakley, hitting her targets at will, making sure of one thing: you lose.
It has been this way –- her way – for years since she began competing. Fourteeen years, to be exact — while the world became her tennis ball. As the Open’s wheelchair championships commence today, Esther Maria Vergeer of Voerden, Netherlands, the chairwoman of the chairs, will begin defending her winning streak that seems to reach the moon. continue reading »
September 08 2010 | US Open | No Comments »
Bud signing autographs
NEW YORK – Lunging desperately at the little yellow ball they were eyeball-to-eyeball at the net for their last swings of the day. The witnesses, about 15,000 of them in Arthur Ashe Stadium , were screaming, urging — most of them in the corner of the young Californian, Sam Querrey.
Make the shot and hang into this fifth set melodrama on the blue pavement – or go home, downcast though knowing you’d gone right down to the US Open’s quarter-final wire. That was the bang-bang proposition for Querrey after dodging one match point. continue reading »
September 07 2010 | US Open | No Comments »
Unisphere with flowers
NEW YORK – Through one of his characters, Marcellus, a scribbler named Shakespeare said there was “something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
But if the Bard had been among 20,000-or-so ticket-holders at an open-air theatre called Arthur Ashe Stadium yesterday, he might have reconsidered that line from his ancient soap, “Hamlet.”
He would have gazed down at a battleground of blue on which a fair lass named Caroline Wozniacki, was making friends for Denmark, her homeland. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t capable of doing rotten things to the other person sharing the US Open stage: Maria Sharapova.
continue reading »
September 06 2010 | US Open | 1 Comment »
Francesca Schiavone enjoying her latest victory
NEW YORK – A lioness is on the loose at a local public park called the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Stay out of the way. Four women didn’t, and the lioness, who speaks Italian, and deals Baroque spin, dined on them and is prowling the quarter-finals of the US Open.
Called “La Lionessa” by compatriots for her quickness to pounce and competitive ferociousness, she is 30-year-old Francesca Schiavone, bred on the dirt lots of Milan but increasingly happy at play on the Open’s swift pavement. continue reading »
September 05 2010 | US Open | 1 Comment »
The dancing fountains in the South Plaza of the US Open grounds
NEW YORK – Heavy winds coursed across the abyss called Ashe Stadium, but they didn’t blow Beatrice Capra away. That job was left to Maria Sharapova, and she went at it devastatingly.
A blonde gale wrapped in an aqua gown, screaming like a cyclone, she was miserly Maria, unwilling to part with a single game as she whooshed into the second week of the US Open, chasing the title that she won four years ago. continue reading »
September 05 2010 | US Open | 1 Comment »
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