Live from New York

Flushing Meadows, New York City, the US Open, Labour Day weekend: the only place and time on earth where and when a person is happy to pay $17 for a hamburger and a Heineken.

From the airport, the stadium is a $10 cab ride or an even cheaper trip on the Q48 through Queens. The key to the Open is to spend as much time as possible watching or thinking about tennis, and to combine this with fast food and ice cold beverages. Done properly, it’s an ethereal and prosaic experience; postmodern and, in its way, pre-modern, all wrapped up in a security-friendly, see-through plastic US Open bag. I’ve been making the pilgrimage for eleven years; heading to the last Grand Slam event of the year as much to put a cap on summer and the various idyllic promises that mark the season, as to see the greatest players in the world match wit and skill in the most taxing and rewarding of tournaments.

Rain delays, bad line calls, five-setters, and embarrassing blowouts. Each year has its own character and charm, and each creates a new context with which to understand a game that is the most articulate metaphor for modern existence. A tennis player is in contact with the ball — the thing that controls his destiny — for mere seconds at a time. Control is illusory, but with it comes victory, and it must therefore be pursued. Compared to giants with wingspans like Condors, or taut, muscular types who can run forever, Roger Federer, the Swiss genius and world number one seed, looks like everyman. But he moves like a ballet dancer, and he exhibits such control over his game and his emotions that he haunts all Grand Slam tournaments. A permanent presence. Like Tiger Woods in golf, Federer forever lurks.

I’m in Section 316, Row Z, Seat 1, with my brother Matthew (a little younger, a few inches taller) for Spaniard Raphael Nadal’s August 31st night match. The twenty-one-year-old and world number two has now proven his mettle on all surfaces, proven that he’s not simply a clay court specialist with topspin-laden ground strokes, a “heavy ball” that, eventually, tires out opponents. He’s got craft, and much early betting is on Nadal, though he’s been plagued with tendonitis in his left knee. I’m in the highest row in the Arthur Ashe main stadium court and the air is thin, the flights overhead a little too close, but tickets were so hard to come that even these took weeks to secure. Back in 1997, my first real-life Open, you could show up for an early round match and get a ticket for centre court without much difficulty. Today, in this city, the US Open has become the Main Event. I settle in.

Nadal rolls over his opponent, a Serb, who wears thick Dave Brubeck glasses and all black. The young Spaniard is a fan favourite but I find it hard to like him. His publicity shots are scrubbed up, maybe even air-brushed, but on court he scowls, circles between points like a predator, and he dictates the pace of play with a series of bothersome superstitious habits. Besides, he reminds me of the guys girls liked back when I was in grade eight. He has muscles, long hair, could grow hair on his chin if he wished. He’s exotic; I’m not, then or now.

My brother and I leave during the third set (shortly before the Serb retires due to injury) and move to the court next door, to Louis Armstrong Stadium. Here, Aussie Lleyton Hewitt is in a dogfight with Argentinean Agustin Calleri, who has played six US Opens and never advanced past the third round. Hewitt won the Open in 2001 and is seeded 16th. On paper, it should be a straightforward affair. But Calleri is playing on another plane. It’s 10:30 p.m., and the crowd is intimate, engrossed in the match. Calleri hits winners seemingly at will, his ground strokes like lightning bolts. He serves with precision, and ties up Hewitt with an array of drop volleys and driving approach shots, every possible bit of artistry you can name. On this night, Calleri’s game is almost Federer-like. Hewitt does his best, scrambles, but Calleri is playing the match of his life and the conclusion is foregone. By the fourth set it is over. The Argentinean triumphs: 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2. We catch the 7 train to Manhattan and catch a night cap at a friend’s place in the Lower East side. There, you watch the matches on TV, the same ones you attended.

September 1, back on the 7 heading northeast to Flushing Meadows with a grounds pass. Virtually everyone on the train is going to the Open. There are Nike T-shirts and Lacoste hats and people who did not read the security information and don’t realize they will have to check their knapsacks. The weather is hot and clear, perfect for baking in the stands. You go though security and settle in at the Grandstand court. Here, almost all seats are general admission, and with a combination of patience and daring, you can work your way down to the front row. At change-overs you scan the crowd for folks leaving courtside seats. Then it’s race time: the first guy to the empty seat gets it. The tickets are $50; a similar seat at an NHL game would cost at least five times as much. It’s 11 a.m. and the first match is a women’s single’s event.

A Russian, Nadia Petrova, versus a Hungarian, Agnes Szavay. The High-ranking Petrova is a block of a woman, a power player with little mobility. Szavay is young and agile, and has a perfect service motion. She quickly gets inside Petrova’s head. The Russian screams, sulks, hits the odd winner, and keeps the match interesting. But in two sets it is done, and Szavay has the biggest win of her young career. Though less athletic than her upstart opponent, if the women’s side of the bracket was best three-out-of-five sets Petrova might have prevailed. She lost her cool, got rattled, and didn’t have time to recover. The women’s game especially keeps throwing up tyros — the Williams’ sisters are seeded twelfth and eighth here — and young phenoms — mostly from the tennis factories of Eastern Europe — haunt Grand Slam tournaments much as Federer does on the men’s side.

Up next, it’s German Tommy Haas (seeded tenth) versus Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean. I sense a marathon. Grosjean is a cunning veteran; Haas a gifted baseliner, a product of Nick Bolletieri’s school, and not afraid to come to net. Haas wins the first two sets easily, a surprise, and seems to have it locked. The crowd rumbles, chides the Frenchman a little, urging him to get his act together and make it interesting. I take this moment to buy the first of many hot-dogs; by the time I return Grosjean has pulled out the third set.

Haas is now cursing in German. This might go five. It does. Both clever practitioners, Haas and Grosjean employ all the tricks (and I think to myself that this particular surface lends itself to all manner of shotmaking; that they have improved the game here at the Open; that Americans innovate.) They exchange lobs, drop shots, and rip winners down the line. Both agree that the referee is blind, and both routinely question calls. Haas loses his mind on one point and rails at the man in the chair. Near the end of the set, Hass inexplicably changes into a bright red shirt. This seems to do the trick. He wins the match. A few days later just before a fifth set tie-breaker against American James Blake, Haas again changes into the red jersey. He won that one too – 4-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-0, 7-6 (7-4), another five-setter – leaving only Andy Roddick left on the men’s side to realize American glory.