I once had a job in which the staffers liked to say that we all had a timeshare on the doghouse. We called it “the Pomeranian palace,” which lent – as Jane Austen might’ve observed – such an elegance to our misery, for no matter how talented you were or how much you worked, eventually the wheel turned to you, because that was the way our bosses rolled.
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Banner for Novak Djokovic at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center proclaiming his 2015 US Open championship. This year’s winner, Djokovic found himself caught up in the Serena Williams-Carlos Ramos controversy at the Open, like everyone else. Photograph by the author.
Does tennis have a gender problem?
My photograph of the facade of the new Louis Armstrong Stadium, which has been a big hit with fans.
Telling the stories of the US Open
Imagine a room with banks upon banks of cubicles, each of which contains a monitor, a laptop and a headset.
No, it’s not a telemarketing business but part of the Media Center at the US Open, which ends Sunday, Sept. 9 with the men’s final. While fans have been raving about the new “Louie,” as in the Louis Armstrong Stadium, or taking in the action at Arthur Ashe or the Grandstand or one of the other courts, members of the press have been hard at work at their designated cubicles, banging out stories for publications and media websites all over the world….
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Will Nike's new Colin Kaepernick ad bring out the fans or the haters?
Colin Kaepernick just does it
Caption: Meghan McCain campaigning with her father, Sen. John McCain, in 2008. Photograph by Rona Proudfoot.
McCain, Trump and telling it like it is
Among the motifs that threaded the death and commemoration of Sen. John McCain – who was to be laid to rest today at the United States Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland – was the notion that he was a straight shooter. After all, his 2000 presidential campaign bus was called the Straight Talk Express. You might not like everything he had to say but you respected him for saying it.
President Donald J. Trump’s admirers will also tell you that what they admire about their man is that he “tells it like it is.” Yet the contrast in their straight talk couldn’t be greater and it was on full display at Saturday’s magnificent funeral service for McCain at Washington National Cathedral in Washington D.C….
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: Hot, hot, hot Stefanos Tsitsipas – who became the youngest man to beat four top 10 players in a row earlier this summer at the Canadian Open – lost to the heat and Daniil Medvedev Wednesday at the US Open. Photograph by Getty Images.
The heat is on at the US Open
The US Open – the last of the Grand Slam tournaments, celebrating its golden jubilee this season – is one of sports’ greatest events and one of its most challenging.
For fans, that is due in part to the difficulty in getting into the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens. Then once inside, members of the New York City Police Department, along with the Open’s security and ushers, have a poor sense of what’s where. (We ourselves were dropped off on Northern Boulevard, which we surmised correctly would be the shortest walk to the Media Center.)
So unless you have the directional skills of a Lewis and Clark, it can be tough going. Equally daunting for fans but especially the players this year has been the soaring heat and humidity….
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An illustration from the poem "Guy u Chawgan" ("The Ball and the Polo-mallet"), an illuminated manuscript in the collection of the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, conveys the ancient Persian origins of polo as an exercise for the imperial cavalry.
The Other Open
If you are a reader of this blog, then you know that I am writing a series of novels called "The Games Men Play" and set in the worlds of swimming, tennis and football. The first two, "Water Music" and "The Penalty for Holding," are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The third will explore the equestrian worlds of show jumping, polo and Thoroughbred racing. It's a tale of bloodlines and bloodlust set amid rival equestrian families and told in part from the viewpoint of a colt that is trying to become the first since Whirlaway to win the Triple Crown and the Travers Stakes.
With this in mind, I thought you'd enjoy a repost from WAG Weekly, the e-newsletter that's part of my editing day job, about the other Open starting today in the New York metro area….
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