Tennis Week 2015 - part one

I had a great time when my mom was here for Tennis Week.  It was hot out, all week long, but we did a pretty good job of finding a/c or shade to try to keep cool.  Be prepared for loads of photos, my new phone does a pretty good job...

Before my mom got here, I was looking at a local magazine that always has tips on fun things to do over the weekend.  I noticed a tour in Hudson River Park that I'd never heard of before - it was a free walking tour of the piers and of an old ship anchored on the west side.  That sounded fun to Mom and me (she really likes hanging out by the water), so we made our way there after her plane landed on Sunday.  We made a couple of pit stops first, to Trader Joe's for some tennis snacks, to Chelsea Market for some gelato (unfortunately, no shopping could happen because it was MOBBED), then on to Pier 66 for our tour.

It was surprisingly full, maybe because of the notice in the local magazine, or maybe because it was the last tour of the summer, but there were a lot of people.  Mom and I kept to the back to avoid crowding.  Our tour guide was young and pretty knowledgeable about the area - he told us about how the city kept building out from its original size, famous ships that had either docked or were supposed to dock nearby, and what efforts are being done to conserve marine life in the area.  Then we took a tour of the Frying Pan, which is a popular brunch spot.  The original ship is from the 20s and there is some of the original equipment and signage still on board.  It was interesting to look around and see vintage sailing paraphernalia and still-visible barnacles.  There were a couple of annoying people on the tour, but on the whole, it was an enjoyable and informative hour.   We were pretty warm, though, so we went back to my apartment and enjoyed some a/c, pasta and movies I'd taped off cable (Austenland: not as bad as I'd been led to believe; Magic in the Moonlight: hmmmmmmmm.  I kept falling asleep).

I have a new book of walking tours of NY and in it, I saw a tip that said the main branch of the New York Public Library has daily walking tours.  My mom loves that building, so we decided to head to Bryant Park on Monday to check out that tour.  It was excellent!  It lasted about an hour and we learned so much about the architecture, the library hierarchy, where it's been and where it's headed.  Our tour guide was pretty old, but he had a lot of wonderful information stored in his brain and he was happy to share it.  Mom was happy to get a look at the Gutenberg Bible and we enjoyed seeing all the nooks and crannies we didn't even know where there.  It was terrific and I'd be tempted to do it again with a different tour guide, just to see if I missed anything.  After that tour, for the rest of the day, Mom and I wandered along Fifth Avenue to check out Rockefeller Center, then the Disney Store, in case we needed some pre-Disney trip magic.  It was a very nice day.

Tuesday, we headed out to the tennis!  Woo hoo!  We started at Court 17, from the one shady spot in the stadium, to watch a young American, Noah Rubin.  Rubin won Junior Wimbledon '14 and recently turned pro.  He has a very nice game - he's very quick around the court and has a solid forehand and backhand.  Mom liked his game very much.  The first set went pretty quickly, but the second set was tighter.  Happily, Rubin came through in two sets.  After his match, Mom and I decided to stay in our shady seats and watch the next young American, CiCi Bellis, who made a big splash at the Open last year.  Her opponent was the oldest lady in the draw, Kimiko Date-Krumm, who is nearly my age!  It's insane!  She's in incredible shape and her game is still pretty sharp.  I'll admit, though, that neither lady was doing a great job in the first set, so Mom and I decided it might be time to go get some lunch, then head to the Grandstand to watch some of the higher ranked pros practice.  Plus, even though we were in the shade, the seats at Court 17 aren't all that comfy.  Sitting in them for over two hours was not really great on my knees or back...

There's a new coffee/tea vendor at the Open this year, so I was sad to be missing out on my Illy iced tea, but the Lavazza tea is nice, too.  Mom and I shared our annual orders of fries, ate our premade sandwiches and Trader Joe snacks, and relaxed in the shade for a bit.  Then we went over to the Grandstand.  She and I are both very sad that this is the last year for the Grandstand.  It's one of the few places on the grounds that has a lot of shade and a lot of room.  They're building a new Grandstand on the other side of the grounds, but it won't be the same.  Anyway.  First we watched two very good German ladies practice, Andrea Petkovic and Angelique Kerber.  Their practice was very lively and featured some hard hitting and super shot-making.  It was very enjoyable.  Then we watched Gilles Muller from Luxembourg practice for a bit with his coach.  Since it was just practicing with a coach and not a practice match with another player, we got bored pretty quickly.  So we went off to Court 5 to watch another match.

Victoria Duval was a rising young American tennis player who was struck with lymphoma before last year's Wimbledon.  After treatment and more than a year off, she got a wild card into the qualifying tournament.  Mom and I were eager to watch her match.  By the time we got over there, we actually had missed the first two sets, which the players had split.  So we were ready to watch the deciding third set.  Duval went off court for a medical treatment at the end of the second set, so we were sitting there for a few minutes before the match resumed.  She came back with her upper thigh tightly wrapped, so I was a bit nervous she wouldn't be able to finish the match, especially since it looked as if she couldn't get any oomph on her serve because she couldn't power up with her legs.  But after a few minutes, she found her footing and got into the match.  She quickly broke her opponent's serve, and her opponent also called for the trainer.  It was a medical time out extravaganza.  Duval took control of the match and won the final set 6-1.  She was thrilled and so was the crowd.  It was nice to see such a smile on her face after she's gone through so much.  On our way out of the court, we watched Duval take photos with fans, sign autographs and do a couple of interviews.  Her joyfulness was lovely to see.  I'm sorry to report that she lost her next match and didn't qualify for the Open, but at least she's healthy again and ready to resume her career. 

Mom and I had had enough sun and tennis for one day, so we left after that match.  We stopped and got some ice cream on the way back to my apartment and had an early night.  Wednesday, we had to run a few errands before heading to the tennis, so we didn't get there until the early afternoon, but that was ok.  We just stayed a little later and saw more tennis.  We went straight to the Grandstand and were thrilled to be able to watch practice between Frenchmen Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils, two of Mom's (and my) very favorites.  They're both elegant and stylish players, plus Monfils is a real showman.  He has flair and joie de vivre, what he doesn't really have is a competitive spirit.  Well, he does, but it seems he would rather entertain than win.  He's probably one of the best pure athletes on the tour, but his ranking rarely reflects his talent.  Anyway, it was a fun practice full of beautiful shotmaking and Gallic flair.  Mom and I had a great time and we were sad when they finished.  We stayed to watch young Spanish gal Carla Suarez Navarro practice - wow, does she hit the ball hard!  Her one-handed backhand is terrific.  I thought she was hitting the ball great and was surprised that she didn't even win her first round match...

Mom and I went over to Court 7 because we saw some shade and also two gents we'd never watched before (Mom and I like to scout new talent - she loves to talk about the year we saw Marcos Baghdatis before he made the Aussie Open final): Marius Copil from Romania and Edouard Roger-Vasselin from France.  Mom and I have decided that Copil is our new boyfriend - he's attractive, his game is attractive and he seemed like a pleasant fellow.  Plus, he had attractive friends.  One of his chums sat next to me during the match and good lord, that man was handsome!  I was swooning!  But on the inside only.  :)

This was a good match, though Copil won handily.  I'm now going to report on my seat neighbors for Court 7:  in front of the handsome man was an elderly gentleman who slept through the entire match.  Well, no, not the entire match.  He would wake up to sneeze ten or twelve times, then he'd blow his nose ten or twelve times, then he'd go back to sleep.  it was bizarre.  And rather gross.  Sitting on the other side of me were two younger gentlemen who apparently had no idea what or where Romania is.  Next to Copil's name on the scoreboard it said ROU.  The young men were puzzled.  Did ROU mean Ukraine?  No, then there'd be a 'k'.  Did it mean Uruguay?  No, the guy doesn't look Latin.  Their conversation was also bizarre.  And don't get me started that they didn't know FRA meant France...

After finding a new boyfriend, Mom and I decided to call it a day.  We'd had two great days at the tennis and I was sad that she had to leave.  But at least I get to see her again soon when I meet my parents in Disney World...

Review - A Delicate Ship

Boy, it's been hard to get back in the groove after a week off.  Plus, I've been listening to the US Open, so it's hard to concentrate.  I'll try to buckle down.  Tennis Week was fantastic; there will be a blog post eventually.  But even before Tennis Week got underway, I was so happy to get an invite from a handsome chum to see Anna Ziegler's play A Delicate Ship.  I know Anna a bit and enjoy her work (I saw one of her earlier plays and liked it quite a lot) so I was excited to get a look at this new-ish piece (I believe it's been done regionally) Monday night.

A Delicate Ship begins with an attractive young couple, Sarah and Sam, sitting on a couch in front of a Christmas tree.  They're saying romantic and charming things to each other and all seems well.  Suddenly, there's a knock on the door.  Not a knock, really, but banging.  And the well-being is shaken.  In comes Nate, a childhood friend of Sarah's, who has come to see Sarah with an agenda of his own.  What ensues is an evening of love, loss, obsession, jealousy and regret (among other things).

So, at first it seems like this will be a standard sort of love triangle/relationship play, but A Delicate Ship is more than that.  Ziegler plays a lot with time in this play, so often, during a scene, the characters will step out and remind us that 'all this happened a long time ago' and will give us information about the past and/or the future that has a bearing on what's happening in the present.  It's all done really well, with strong dialogue and keen insight into these characters, who truly seem like people instead of mouthpieces or stereotypes.  And, like most good plays, the more specific the situations for these characters, the more universal the play seems.

photo credit: Jenny Anderson

Normally, I'm a bit impatient with relationship stories about privileged folk in their 30s: 'oh, where am I going, what am I doing, woe is me.'  Yeesh, shut up, I generally don't care.  But Ziegler really digs more deeply into these people, and alongside the playing with time and space, I found much to relate to during the show.  At one point, Sarah says something like "When you're 33 and not married and a woman, you've been alone a very long time."  I rolled my eyes and at first thought, gee, then I should just be dead at 51, but the terrific blending of the writing and the acting made me remember how I felt in my 30s and it touched something in me.  There were quite a few moments like that - the characters' uses of memory would trigger one in me and I would relate to something else.  One of the characters in the play lives almost entirely in his past and I have friends like that.  And whenever a character says "What if I hadn't opened that door?", my brain jolted with recognition.  I frequently replay moments of my life that were sad or badly handled and imagine a different outcome if I had just 'not opened that door.' 

Besides the playing with time, I also enjoyed the aspects of the vagaries of memory throughout (can we ever really trust memory?  Can memory truly be shared?), and also the heightened and often poetic language the characters would use in their speeches to the audience.  It opened our brains a bit before taking us back into the grittier drama of the here and now.  And there was a lot of drama.  I'll admit that right after seeing the play, I was of the opinion that one of the actors was WAY overdoing it.  There were too many quirks and jitters and hyperactive gestures for my taste.  But as I've been thinking about the play over the last couple days, I acknowledge that the actor's interpretation was entirely valid for this character, who was also wildly overplaying a part.  So even though that performance style may not have been exactly my cup of tea, I guess it did its job.

I was very engaged in this story and wondered how it would all come out.  Well, no, actually, one of the plot points was quite telegraphed throughout, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily a bad thing and that I didn't wonder how it would affect the other characters.  I will say that I was a tad disappointed that the play seemed to have at least two, if not three endings, and maybe the repetition got to be a bit much for me and lessened my emotional commitment to the end of the play.  Intellectually, I understand what Ziegler may have been going for, but for me, I lost my engagement with the too-neat bows the play seemed to be tying.  But maybe that was just me.

All in all, it was a lovely evening.  I enjoyed A Delicate Ship quite a lot.  It was also nice to catch up with my handsome chum, who I see all too infrequently.  And a tasty pomegranate margarita before a show is never a bad thing.  It was a terrific Monday late-summer evening.  Hopefully, I can get back into my groove soon...