Thursday, August 31, 2017

Tennis Week 2017 - another terrific time! (part two)

Welcome back!  Unfortunately, the extremely hot weather continued to our first day at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (say THAT three times fast!), so Mom and I spent much of the day looking for shade.  I did break away from Mom a couple of times to watch some match play, but we mostly looked for shade and watched practice in the new Grandstand, where you can find shade on the far side of the stadium in the afternoons.

There's a lot of construction in and around the tennis center - there's a temporary Louis Armstrong Stadium while the real one that opens next year is being finished, and they finally tore down the old Grandstand.  But nearly everywhere you look, there was some kind of construction going on.  So everything was a little bit noisier, a little bit dirtier, and little bit more crowded.  We wandered over to the food court, to see what was new this year (Melt Shop!  Yay, tater tots!), then I went to the Lavazza stand to see if they reinstated their iced tea option. Unfortunately, no.  Darn it. 

We then walked over to the new practice court area and found a little bit of shade near Court 6.  While Mom stayed in the shade, I watched the first set of a match between two new-to-me players: Bellotti from Italy and Collarini from Argentina. Collarini got the first break of serve, but Bellotti soon found his groove and ended up winning the first set and then the match. While I was watching the tennis, Mom went to the practice court area to look at the practice schedule: we saw that American Madison Keys would be practicing in the new Grandstand (which had shade), so we wandered over there.

Madison is coached by former pro Lindsay Davenport, so it was fun to watch the two of them interact.  It was so hot, Madison didn't practice super-hard, but she did seem to be having fun.  And gosh, she hits the ball hard.  At one point, she was doing target practice with her serve, which was fun to watch. After she was done practicing, Mom and I went to the food court to get some fries and a beverage, then we went back to the shade in the Grandstand to watch two of the guys practice - Feliciano Lopez of Spain and Marin Cilic (2014 champ) of Croatia.  This was a good practice to watch, with contrasting styles and contrasting temperaments.  Pretty much their full arsenals were on display, with big serves vs serve and volley, huge forehands vs slice backhands.  It was fun.  But gosh, we were hot. 

Since none of the qualifying matches were happening on a court that had any shade, we decided to leave early, since there were three more days of tennis.  We went out and got some ice cream at the little kiosk right outside the tennis center, then sat and watched more practicing on the courts in the park.  These courts were under shady trees, so it was much nicer to sit there.  We even saw a boyfriend from last year, Marius Copil from Romania!  He has done well this year and didn't have to qualify for the Open, he got directly in.  It was nice to watch him practice from so close.  When we got home and relaxed in air-conditioned not-quite-splendor, Mom and I watched The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith.  She is quite wonderful in the movie, which is a little awkward and twee as a film.  I'm sure it was much more interesting as a play.  But it was fun to watch more of the Maggie Smith genius...

Wednesday, thankfully, it was a little cooler, so Mom and I had high hopes to watch actual matches.  I forgot to mention earlier, this year in the qualifying tournament, the USTA was trying out two new things: on-court coaching, as long as the coach was on the opposite side of the court as the chairs, and a shot clock, counting down the 25 seconds between the starts of each point.  They were both interesting new ideas, but some of the players had issues with them.  I'll try to mention them moving forward.

The first thing we did was head back towards Court 6, since it had a shady section and since it was by the practice courts and the practice schedule board. Mom sat in some shade while I went to check out the practice schedule - I was happy to see that Mom's favorite, Rafael Nadal, would be practicing in a few minutes, and my darling Roger would be practicing a little later in the day, both on the Grandstand (where we could find shade).  So off we went to the Grandstand. We found some shady seats and enjoyed an energetic practice between Nadal and Lucas Pouille from France (coincidentally, Pouille is the player who knocked Nadal out of the Open last year. Hm.  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?).

I noticed on my US Open app that one of my favorites, Nicolas Mahut from France, would be playing his first round match soon.  I ditched my mom and left her to watch her favorite, and went back over to Court 6 to watch Mahut.  Actually, first I had to watch the end of another match first, a young American, Raymond Sarmiento, against Benjamin Bonzi from France.  Bonzi wasn't as fun to watch as his name is to say.  Again, I didn't know either of these players, but I was impressed with Sarmiento's cool head and improvisation skills. Thankfully, he won relatively quickly and Mahut came out soon after. Mahut was playing Soo Woo Kwon from Korea.  

I just like Mahut's game.  I've been watching him for quite a while now.  He keeps his ranking up in doubles (he and his partner have won the last two tournaments), but his singles ranking goes up and down.  It's too bad he keeps having to qualify, but at least it means I get to watch him.  For free.  And a special bonus, I was sitting behind Mahut's wife and son!  His son is adorable!  He kept yelling "allez, papa!" in the cutest voice.  So that made the match even more fun.  Mahut was in control the whole match, though it did take him a while to get into the whole 'shot clock' thing.  He kept asking the chair umpire if the clock started at the end of the previous point, if it started when he got the towel.  He seemed a little rattled by it, but he never went over the 25 seconds.  Oh, and Mahut also had quite an argument with the chair umpire at the end of the first set: Mahut thought he served an ace to end the set, but as he was doing his fist pump and walking back to his chair, the chair umpire called "LET."  Mahut wasn't having it.  I was afraid he would be so out of his concentration that he would lose the game, but he didn't, thankfully.  He won the match pretty easily and his son was so excited.  Adorable.

After the Mahut match, Mom and I went to eat a quick lunch, so we could get back to the shade in the Grandstand and watch my uber-favorite, Roger Federer practice.  Squee!  It's been a long time since I could watch Roger practice for an extended length of time. He was on court with a young American, Mackenzie McDonald, who has a very pleasant way about him. Roger didn't look like he was playing full out, his serve looked abbreviated, and he didn't run for every ball, but he did look relatively fit.  Perhaps he was easing himself back into fighting mode.  I enjoyed watching him for the full 90 minute practice, then we were treated to more pros, when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet (both from France) came in to practice.  They both have terrific joie de vivre, plus they're friends, so their practices are always enjoyable.  After watching them for about an hour, Mom and I decided to call it a day, since the other matches we were interested in checking out had no shade (my mom was not having the sunny court matches). We left and went to Panera Bread for dinner (for some reason, I was jonesing for a turkey sandwich).  It was another nice day.

You know what?  This post has been long enough.  I'll put the last two days of Tennis Week in another post.  Besides, my brain is tired.  :)  



































Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Tennis Week 2017 - another terrific time! (part one)

photo credit: Uli Seit
You all know how much I love it when my mom comes to visit for Tennis Week.  It's definitely one of my favorite weeks of the year - we just have a lot of fun and a lot of laughs when we're together.  I need to do a better job with her flight times, though, I feel as if we missed some good times yutzing around with LaGuardia airport...

Mom got here last Monday and I already knew what the main event for that day would be: a friend of ours had posted photos of his ferry ride from downtown Manhattan to the Rockaways and my mom always enjoys a ferry ride.  So we made plans to do that. Because LaGuardia is such a nightmare at the moment, due to all the construction, I actually took a car over there from my apartment so I could meet my mom and then we took a cab ride back to my apartment.  It seemed easier to do that than to try to relay the maze that is the ground transportation hub to my mom over the phone. After we got her settled in the apartment, off we went to Pier 11.

When we got off the subway at Whitehall Street, we were met by a lot of vendors trying to sell us ferry rides out to the Statue of Liberty.  I asked one of them where I could find Pier 11 and he told me to take a left at the next street.  My mom and I did that, and as I tried to get my phone's GPS going, I could hear someone yelling "MISS! MISS! MISS!"  I suddenly realized it was the nice vendor running after us - he told us we had to cross the street and then turn left.  I thought it was very nice of him to make sure we were going the right way.  If we hadn't crossed the street first, we would've gotten completely lost. Monday was a really sunny warm day and, we had forgotten, it was also the day of the eclipse. When we got to Pier 11, the line for the ferry was already pretty long.  I was surprised, thinking a weekday morning wouldn't be very busy.  My mom got in line while I ran in to buy our tickets; when I got back, she told me the ladies in front of her said that one of the NY papers had printed that the Rockaways would be the best place to watch the eclipse.  Aha! That's why the line was so long!

We stood in the line for about a half hour, then we got onto the ferry; I dashed ahead so I could find us seats up on the top level.  Success!  The ride is about an hour long, with a stop about fifteen minutes in.  It was breezy, sunny and wonderful!  It's pretty loud, so you can't have much conversation, plus I had to hold on to my hat pretty tightly, but it was such a fun ride out to the Rockaways.  We passed Coney Island and went under bridges, it was great.  When we landed in the Rockaways, we crossed over to the boardwalk to look for snacks.  We at first thought we'd try a pub, but it was full of smoking, already-drunk-at-11-am gents, so we passed that by.  We went to the frozen yogurt shop, but they were on a break.  Some cute kids waiting outside said the owners would be back in about a half hour.  One of them said there was pizza nearby, but it seemed kind of far to me.  And then one kid said that she'd send us over to the boardwalk to eat, but it was too hot and too dangerous.  Uh, dangerous?  Mom and I looked at each other, and walked to the boardwalk anyway.

We finally came upon Caracas, which was a terrific little place with arepas, empanadas and some fun beverages.  I got the hibiscus iced tea, which was icy deliciousness, and Mom and I shared an empanada with chicken and some french fries.  Weird combo, I know, but Mom and I like french fries.  They were crispy and good, and the empanada was SO good.  The dough was flaky and rich, and the chicken was really fresh and flavorful.  I think it came with a fruity habanero dipping sauce, which was a little hot for us, but we used a dab a couple of times.  

Since it was pretty sunny and there wasn't a lot of shade to be found, AND because the ferry only travels once a hour, we pretty much just walked along the boardwalk for a bit after lunch, then went back to the boat dock to ride back to Manhattan.  We were on the boat when it was supposedly high-eclipse time, so my mom kept shouting "Don't look at the sun!" whenever I turned my head towards the sky. She kept making me laugh.  I had had enough sun on the ride out to the Rockaways, so we sat downstairs on the inside going back.  If there was a view of the eclipse, we missed it. It was also FREEZING in there, which was nice for the first fifteen minutes or so, then we were just cold.  Oh well.  It was a beautiful day for a boat ride.

When we got back to Pier 11, we walked uptown towards the South Street Seaport, which doesn't look anything like I remember.  I thought there was a shopping mall there, but I couldn't find it.  We were just kind of wandering around, then just happened to find ourselves at a magical location: in front of the Big Gay Ice Cream food truck.  SCORE!  I was so excited!  I've been wanting Mom to try a Salty Pimp (one of the specials at Big Gay Ice Cream), but we never seem to make it to the Village when she's here.  Happiness.  We shared a Salty Pimp and it was glorious.  Various people kept wandering past us, looking into cereal boxes that were turned into eclipse viewers, but we still pretty much missed the whole thing.  Oh well.  We did a little bit of shopping downtown, then took a train uptown, so I could show my mom some stores I thought she'd like, and a grocery store where we could pick up some snacks for our upcoming tennis viewing.  All in all, a fine (and busy) first day.  We decided to watch a movie on my Roku when we got back to my apartment - I Saw the Light, a biopic about Hank Williams starring Tom Hiddleston.  I didn't think the movie was all that, but Hiddleston is always good, and Cherry Jones played his mother.  She's always great.  Plus, Hank Williams' music is terrific, no matter who sings it.  So I guess I'm glad we watched it.

I think I'll save the tennis talk for my next post - enjoy the photos I got on (and off) the ferry!