matthearn.com

I am not a patient person. Among my manifold faults, impatience is the greatest and most shameful. It causes me to be a worse father than I should be, and, coupled with a twisted sense of justice, a particularly bad driver. So you can only imagine how much I enjoyed waiting in line at the US Open for nearly an hour yesterday. Not because there were a lot of people, though there were; people began queuing up at 4:45pm, with an advertised entry of 6pm, and we got in line shortly after 5. We were within 25 feet of the front of the line. And there we stood, until the authorities decided we were worthy of entrance.

Bear in mind that this was not entrance to the stadium, which was admittedly already full of patrons watching the matches before the ones we had tickets to see. This was merely entrance to the grounds, where we could walk a bit, do a little light shopping, and suck down food and beer like only Americans can. But we were not permitted to do so.

Us: Hey! US Open! We’re waiting out here! We would like to spend money purchasing products from your vendors, who I’m sure kick a healthy percentage into the coffers of the US Tennis Association! How about opening the gate?

US Open: Suck it.

Us: C’mon, man, be COOL.

US Open: (Moons us.)

Not an auspicious start. Our hopes of being let in at 6pm, as advertised, were dashed when the previous match ended at roughly 5:59, and they delayed the opening to allow the previous group of folks to escape. At 6:15, they finally deigned to allow us entry. We sprinted in, and made our way to the food court, where we discovered that

1. they had an Indian food kiosk, and


2. it featured no lines at all.

We grabbed platters of lamb, chicken, curried chick peas, and rice, and shoveled it down while sipping on the finest beers available (Heineken, as it turned out). Amusing anecdote: because seating in the food court is somewhat limited, the four of us (my parents, myself, and a buddy named Jeff that I know from high school and my parents know from church choir because we live in an insanely small state) got to sit with two young gentleman of indeterminate foreign extraction. We didn’t really talk, because neither group really understood the other’s English; I simply thought it was funny that the four Americans were eating Indian food, and the two foreign fellows were eating chicken fingers and french fries. Another odd thing I noticed was the number of people who walked by who stared longingly at our food. I took this an excuse to stare at a lot of bosoms, because there apparently was some kind of memo that I missed that said that appropriate attire for the US Open includes skin-tight tube dresses, loose halter-tops, and ridiculous bustiers. Would you wear something like this to a tennis match, particularly on a night with temperatures dipping into the low 60s? Many young ladies (and a few older ones, ::shudder::) did so.

(In the interest of full disclosure: it was awesome. I saw more cleavage than at a Jersey Shore reunion. A++++ would ogle again.)

My mother revealed the fact that, while we had tickets for Arthur Ashe Stadium to see the premier women’s and men’s singles matches of the day (including Roger Federer), our tickets also meant that we could wander the ground and watch other matches on lesser courts. So we caught a little bit of mixed doubles in a court so small I could smell the line judge’s BO (though that might have been my father releasing a bit of post-curry pressure). We tried to get in to watch the American Bryan brothers dismantle Mardy Fish and someone named Knowles that I assume was Beyoncé, but by the time we were able to get into the stadium the match was within a game of ending and we never did get seated. After finding some more beer, we headed to Arthur Ashe to see what was happening.

The match in question featured German Andrea Petcovic against Russian Vera Zvonareva, and we saw most of the second set in a straight shellacking by Zvonareva, who has intoxicating eyes. (I would describe the match, but I’m no professional sports journalist, and also my memories of it are not vivid because of four beers that found their way into my belly.)

Before the Federer-Melzer match, we were “treated” to a rendition of “America” by an 11-year-old Staten Island girl who seemed somewhat unclear as the actual melody, who randomly changed key in the middle of the verse, and who (worst of all) disregarded the usual tempo of the song in favor of a slow dirge-like rendition that forced me to go purchase more beer.

While I was up, I decided it would be best to make room in my bladder for the additional liquid, so I went in search of the men’s room, and discovered an interesting anomaly of Arthur Ashe Stadium: recognizing that women take longer to pee than men, the architects built, near as I can tell, exactly twice as many bathrooms for ladies than for gents. This led to the remarkable situation in which there were no lines for the ladies’, but the men’s room line was rolling 40 deep. It moved quickly, at least.

I managed to acquire more suds, and went to my seat just in time for the introduction of the Swiss Federer, and his German opponent, Jürgen Melzer. I’ll spare you the play-by-play (remember: beer), but will note that if you were to hear somewhere that Melzer was dispatched in straight sets, it would be worth noting that while Federer did break Melzer twice in the first set, Melzer broke back once, the second set ended in a tie-break, and the last set featured a number of hard-fought games before Roger finally got the upper hand.

We managed to fight our way out through the crowds, and I’ll speak not of the fact that the authorities deliberately blocked at least one downward staircase to prevent our use, for no discernible reason, and merely say that our walk back to the car was pleasant on a cool, cloud-less night, and the ability to park at Citi Field (the Mets were in Chicago last night) saved us from fighting too much traffic on our exit.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to the NYPD, which was helpful both in finding parking on our way in, and directing traffic on our way out. Holla, Thin Blue Line.