USOpen2006

A tradition in our family for 4 years now has been making a pilgrimage to Flushing Meadows each Labor Day to watch the U. S. Open. A special treat is staying with our great friend Lee Stuart, who lives in the Bronx. This year, as always, Lee was our 'Border Collie', herding us through the train/subway/streets of NYC as only a native can do.

This year, we were very fortunate to have the whole family there (ian drove in from Boston, Trevor from Charlottesville, and Kate came with us from Mo'town). On Saturday, we all went to 'Drumstruck', a cross-cultural audience-participation drumming show using bongos. It was amazing that the audience was as capable as it was in providing background rhythms for the performers on stage, who trained us. Our second row seats were ideal for marveling at the dancing and powerful drumming onstage.

Sunday was tennis-day 1. We saw a long 5-setter with Marat Safin finally defeating David Nalbandian; quite an epic match, but we didn't see too much else that day because it was so long! We did get to see Rafa Nadal play against a relative unknown and his intense energy really won over the crowd. We also caught the end of a Lindsay Davenport match which she almost lost - it was exciting because who knows when she will retire, and she had a match point against her, which she saved, only to then win in the tiebreak moments later.

On the second day, Kate and I had Arthur Ashe tix, and she wanted to see Nadal play there. We saw Justine Henin-Hardenne too, but she was just overwhelming her opponent, so we skipped out to watch Elena Dementieva play on Court 11. Those matches are always so much fun to watch because you are right next to the court. Every once in a while I think I could stay on the court and win a game or two against these top-ranked women. A quick trip to Court 11 convinces me otherwise. Dementieva simply crushes the ball on both backhands and forehands. Even her serve, a notorious 'weakness' is far better than mine. Guess I'll have to dream on...

Kate and I watched Andy Roddick play for a bit at the end of the day in Ashe. He was doing very well.

Pretty cool to see two of the eventual finalists live (Roddick, Henin-Hardenne). Though the Roddick match hasn't happened as of this posting, I suspect we saw the two eventual losers...