NEW YORK – Waiting for Earl… Thousands decided to wait for Earl the Hurricane at the tennis parlor in Flushing Meadows. They packed umbrellas, raincoats, hip boots, transistors, emergency rations, perhaps collapsible row boats and kerosene lanterns. Peering at the rumpled gray sky and the US Open’s blue tennis courts, the tennis nuts were ready for anything. They … [Read more...] about EARL FLOPS, TOURNAMENT MOVES ON
Tournaments
IS NO. 371, CAPRA, GOING TO BE THE NEW OUDIN?
NEW YORK – “…and so here I am…” Where is “here”? For the young American speaker, Beatrice Capra, the word had geographical and geneological meaning. She was very unexpectedly taking up space in the third round of the year’s last major tennis championship, the US Open. Wearing a No. 371 ranking, she sent No. 20 Arazane Rezai home to France, 7-5, 2-6, 6-3, … [Read more...] about IS NO. 371, CAPRA, GOING TO BE THE NEW OUDIN?
THE COMING AND GOING: HARRISON AND YOUNG
NEW YORK — You are 11-years-old, and you’re trying to beat your old man on a tennis court. He shellacs you. No mercy. But this is no casual backyard scuffle. It’s for the men’s championship of Shreveport, Louisiana. “I wanted to win more than anything in the world at the time,” Ryan Harrison, now 18, is saying after causing the first real shakeup in the young US Open. … [Read more...] about THE COMING AND GOING: HARRISON AND YOUNG
BENNETEAU SALUTES ANNIVERSARY OF SAMPRAS SPILL
NEW YORK — Lose your lunch but win the match. It isn’t easy, and some might say it takes guts, and the ability to stand up when you’d just as soon lie down and take a 10 count. You never know when the whim-whams will strike, but yesterday they did on the 14th anniversary of Pete Sampras’s historic US Open spill. A Frenchman named Beneteau joined Pete’s exclusive club by … [Read more...] about BENNETEAU SALUTES ANNIVERSARY OF SAMPRAS SPILL
US OPEN SWEETHEART, MELANIE, KEEPS GOING
NEW YORK – From the sea-breezed grassblades of Rhode Island’s Newport Casino in 1881 to the steaming blue asphalt slabs of Flushing Meadows, the planet’s longest-running tennis show has settled in again for a fortnight’s duels with gut-strung cudgels. Oh, yes, I know that Wimbledon is four years older, but was dark nine years for World Wars I and II. Anyway, some call this … [Read more...] about US OPEN SWEETHEART, MELANIE, KEEPS GOING