By David A. F. Sweet
“I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and also the most demanding,” wrote David Foster Wallace, likely the best tennis writer of his generation before he committed suicide in 2008. “It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage.”
Despite a slow start, Jannick Sinner proved formidable in his third-round match.
Witnessing two top players over five hours (that seemed to pass in an instant) proved Wallace’s observation. Lodged 10 rows up during the U. S. Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Aug. 30, we watched Coco Gauff and Jannick Sinner – 21 and 24, respectively – display all of the traits Wallace enumerated.
Inspired by a pro-American crowd, No. 3-ranked Gauff dispatched Magdalena Frech in two sets. Her sneakers squeaked relentlessly on the hard court as she moved quickly to return shots. After struggling in her previous match against an unseeded opponent, Gauff showed why she is two-time champion of Grand Slam tournaments. Frech’s aspirations for her first U.S. Open title dissolved quickly during a 6-3, 6-1 defeat. With her long pigtail flopping about with every shot, unforced errors from 27th-ranked native of Poland meant the match was over in slightly more than an hour.
It is quite an eye-opener to watch a top men’s match right after a women’s competition. I counted one ace in the entire Gauff-Frech battle; Sinner and 28th-ranked Denis Shapovalov exceeded that in their first game. Their serves often bested 120 miles per hour, while the ladies were closer to 100 miles per hour. Shapovalov even fired an ace on a second serve.
Though the world’s No. 1 men’s player started slowly – embarrassingly losing the first set on a double fault, his fourth to that point – Sinner recovered the way champions do. He seemed to gain strength and serve more powerfully. Shapovalov made more unforced errors — certain death against greatness. Hitting an easy drop shot into the net exemplified his troubles.
Sinner made two incredible winning lobs in the match from tough positions and eventually prevailed in four sets, his 24th win in a row on hard surfaces.
How fortunate were we to see Gauff and Sinner. Procuring tickets to a third-round match many days before the event is a crapshoot, especially for a morning session, as often the best players compete at night (watching during sunlight also means a lower level of celebrity sightings; former Bears’ quarterback Andy Dalton counted as a main one during our visit). Gauff and Sinner were both able to navigate the ever-changing shadows at Arthur Ashe.
All sorts of advanced technology can be found at the U.S. Open, but this scoreboard is updated the old-fashioned way.
It seems like all of New York embraces the U.S. Open fortnight (actually, 15 days starting this year). Even the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, open since 1880, served Honey Deuces, the popular U.S. Open drink that goes for $23 apiece in Queens. Just about every establishment we visited set their televisions to the matches. Elevator conversations in our hotel focused on the tournament.
Growing up in central Illinois, David Foster Wallace was a strong junior tennis player. But he wasn’t elite, the way he was at writing. Fortunately, he shared in print the bonus that witnesses of tennis eminence enjoy.
“It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones truly able to see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied.”
The Sporting Life columnist David A. F. Sweet can be reached at dafsweet@aol.com.
