On Tennis

by David Foster Wallace

  “It is like he used to be brat, arrogant—you know what I am saying?”

  “He grew up is what you’re saying. Now he’s got balls.”

  “Last night, this was a great game he played. This is what I am saying.”

  “He used to just be this hairball. Now he grew up. Now he’s a person.”17

  But so they’re coming, 40,000 yesterday and 41,000 today, ready to shell out $25–$30 for a ticket if they can even get one.18 They come by infernal and Stygian IRT subway out to the end of the #7 line, the Shea-Willets stop. They converge on NE Queens via the Van Wyck and L.I. and Whitestone Expressways, the Interborough, the Grand Central Parkway, the Cross Bay, bringing much ready cash and whatever religious medals apply to parking spaces. City dwellers navigate by limo, cab, or bus the empty canyons of L.D.W.’s Manhattan, bound for 36th St. and the Tunnel or 59th and the Queensborough Bridge, then travel forever19 up Northern Boulevard, bringing coolers and blankets and rackets and butt-cushions with GIANTS and JETS on them and sunscreen and souvenir hats from last year’s Open, up Northern Blvd. under circling air traffic until the landmarks start emerging—the squat neutron-blue ring of nearby Shea Stadium; the huge steel armillary sphere and Tinkertoy-shaped tower of the ’39 World’s Fairgrounds that adjoin the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow Corona Park20; or (if coming in from the S-SW) the massive exoskeleton of a whole new N.T.C. Stadium Complex, incomplete and deeply eerie as seen from the Grand Central Pkwy., a huge exposed ribcage looming over fields of raw dirt and construction-site clutter and dumpsters from the New Style Waste Disposal Co., w/ three huge canted cranes motionlessly erect against the northern horizon. No labor is under way on the new Stadium this Labor Day Weekend except for two hard-hatted and forlornly bored Security guys patrolling inside the site’s fence.

  The N.T.C.’s Main Gate is on the grounds’ NE side, connected to the #7 train’s subway stop and parking lots by a broad blacktop promenade that leads from the commuter stations south past Park Rangers’ offices and a couple of big open communitarian circles—the kind of open urban venues that look like they ought to have spurting fountains in the center, though these don’t—with green benches and complex skateboarding and vigorous sinister underground commerce. At some point the promenade curves sharply west so that the Open’s moving crowds pass within sight of rampant picnicking and soccer in F.M.C. Park (the “Meadow” part, apparently); then the walkway’s final blacktop straightaway’s enclosed by high fences topped with flags of all nations as you head for the parallel lines for actual entry at the tournament’s Main Gate, the Gate’s own tall fencing black iron and almost medievally secure-looking and itself topped only by good old U.S. flags, with the Open’s/U.S.T.A.’s familiar greeting and self-assertion in bright brave 160-point caps on a banner hanging over the turnstiles, of which turnstiles there are six total but never more than three in actual operation. The turnstiles are only for those who already have tickets21—the East-Bloc-length line for AM tickets at the Box Office evaporates every day by around 1100h., when stern megaphones announce the day’s sellout.

  Besides the Stadium/Grandstand, there are three other N.T.C. “Show Courts,” i.e., courts with serious bleachers. At 1640h., Court 16 is running men’s doubles with Eltingh-Haarhuis, the world’s #1 team, and its little wedge of aluminum stands isn’t even full. American tennis crowds seem decisively singles-oriented. Court 17 has Korda and Kulti against the Mad Bahamian Mark Knowles22 and his 1995 partner Daniel Nestor, the Canadian who’s fun to watch because he looks so much like an anorectic Mick Jagger.23 Court 18 has women’s doubles with four players whose names I don’t recognize and exactly thirty-one people in the stands. (All four of the females on 18 have bigger forearms than I do.) Natasha Zvereva, looking incomplete without Gigi, is warming up against Amy Frazier in the Grandstand. In the Stadium, Philippoussis and Sampras have split the first two sets, 6 and 5. What a big match sounds like outside the Stadium is brief strut-rattling explosions of applause and whistles and then the odd flat amplification of the umpire speaking into the abrupt silence his speaking has created. Daniel Nestor’s last name, while also Hellenistic, is Homerian,24 thus allusive to a wartime way before Athens v. Sparta. The fact that Sampras has won so many Grand Slam titles may have a lot to do with the fact that Slams’ males’ matches are the best of five sets. Best-of-fives require not just physical endurance but a special kind of emotional flexibility: in best-of-fives you can’t play with full-bore intensity the whole time; you have to know when to kind of turn it on and when to lay back and conserve your psychic resources.25 Philippoussis won the tie-break of a first set in which you got the impression that Sampras was sort of adjusting the idle on his game, trying to find the exact level he needed to reach to win. The suspense of the match isn’t so much whether Sampras will win but how hard he’ll have to play and how long it’ll take him to find this out. Philippoussis hits very hard but has no imagination and even less flexibility. He’s like a machine with just one gear: unless forced out of his rhythm by a wide-angle shot, he moves exclusively in forward-backward vectors. Sampras, on the other hand, seems to float like dander all over the court.26 Philippoussis is like a great and terrible land army; Sampras is more naval, more of the drift-and-encircle school. Philippoussis is oligarchic: he has a will and seeks to impose it. Sampras is more democratic, i.e., more chaotic but also more human: his real job seems to be figuring out what his will exactly is. Not a lot of people remember that Athens actually lost the Peloponnesian War—it took thirty years, but Sparta finally ground them down. Nor do most people know that Athens actually started the whole bloody thing in the first place by picking on maritime allies of Sparta who were cutting into Athens’s sea trade. Athens’s clean-cut nice-guy image is a bit overdone—the whole exhausting affair was about commerce right from the beginning.

  What’s fun about having a U.S. Open ’95 Media Pass is that you can go in and out of the Main Gate as often as you want. For paying customers there’s no such luck: a sign by the turnstiles says ALL EXITS FINAL with multiple exclamation points. And the lines for entry at the three active turnstiles resemble those grim photos of trampling crowds at Third World soccer matches. Wizened little old men are paid by the tournament to stand by the turnstiles and take people’s tickets—the same sort of wizened little old men you see at sporting-event turnstiles everywhere, the kind who always look like they should be wearing Shriners hats. Going through one turnstile right now at 1738h. is a very handsome bald black man in an extremely snazzy Dries Van Noten camelhair suit. Pushing hip-first through the next turnstile27 is a woman in an electric-blue pantsuit of either silk or really good rayon. At the third active turnstile, a young foreignish-looking guy in an expensive flannel shirt w/ Ray-Bans and a cellular phone is having an argument with the turnstile’s ticket-taker. The guy is claiming that he bought tickets for 3 Sept. but has mistakenly left them at home in Rye and will be dam-ned if he is going to be forced by a minimum-wage little wizened ticket-taker into going all the way back to Rye to get them and then coming all the way back down here. He has his cellular phone in his hand, leaning over the ticket-taker: surely, he insists, there’s some way to verify his ticket-holding status without his going and coming all the way back to produce the actual stupid cardboard rectangles themselves. The ticket-taker, in a blue suit that makes him look a bit like a train’s conductor, is shaking his gnarled little head and has his arms raised in that simultaneously helpless but firm gesture of Can’t Help You, Mac. The young man in flannel from Rye keeps flipping his cellular open and starting to dial it in a menacing way, as if threatening to get the ticket-taker in Dutch with shadowy figures from the Open’s Olympian management heights the young man’s got connections with; but the stolid little attendant’s resolve stays firm, his face stony and his arms raised,28 until crowd pressure from customers at the flannel man’s rear and flank force him to withdraw the field.

  The first thing you see when you come inside the Main Gate is teams of extremely att
ractive young people giving away free foil packets of Colombian Coffee from really big plastic barrels with outlines of Juan Valdez & devoted burro on them. The young people, none of whom are of Colombian extraction, are cheery and outgoing but don’t seem to be terribly alert, because they keep giving me new free samples every time I go out and then come in again, so that my bookbag is now stuffed with them and I’m not going to have to buy coffee for months. The next thing you see is a barker on a raised dais urging you to purchase a Daily Drawsheet for $2.0029 and a Program+Drawsheet for a bargain $8.00. Right near the barker is a gorgeous spanking-new Infiniti automobile on a complicated stand that places the car at a kind of dramatic plunging angle. It’s not clear what the relation between a fine new automobile and professional tennis is supposed to be, but the visual conjunction of car and plunging angle is extremely impressive and compelling, and there’s always a dense ring of spectators around the Infiniti, looking at it but not touching it.30 Then, over the Daily Drawsheet pitchman’s right shoulder and situated suspiciously close to the Advance Ticket Window, is what has to be one of the largest free-standing autotellers in the Western world, with its own shade-awning and three separate cash stations with controls of NASA-like sophistication and complexity and enormous signs that say the autoteller’s provided through the generosity of CHASE and that it is equipped to disgorge cash via the NYCE, PLUS, VISA, CIRRUS, and MASTERCARD networks of auto-withdrawal. The lines for the autoteller are so long that they braid complexly into the lines for the nearest concession stands. These concession stands seem to have undergone a kind of metastasis since last year: they now are absolutely everywhere on the N.T.C. grounds. One strongly suspects that the inside story on how a concession at the U.S. Open is acquired would turn out to involve levels of intrigue and gamesmanship that make the tournament’s on-court dramas look pallid, because it’s clear that the really serious separation of spectator from his cash takes place at the N.T.C.’s concession venues, all of which are doing business on the sort of scale enjoyed by coastal grocery and hardware stores during a Hurricane Warning. The free-standing little umbrella’d venues for Evian and Häagen-Dazs are small potatoes: there are entire miniature strip-malls of refreshment stands gauntleting almost every sidewalk and walkway and easement on the grounds—even the annular ground-level tunnel of the Stadium/Grandstand—offering sodapop for $2.50–$3.50, $3.00 water, $3.00 little paper troughs of nachos or crosshatched disk-shaped French fries whose oil immediately soaks through the trough, $3.50 beer, $2.50 popcorn,31 etc.32

  Now a huge roar that makes the whole Stadium’s superstructure wobble signifies that the forces of democracy and human freedom have won the third set.33 It’s quite clear that Sampras has found his cruising altitude and that Philippoussis is going to take the first set he won and treasure it and go home to do more bench-presses in preparation for the ATP’s indoor season.

  I do not know who a certain Ms. or Mr. Feron is, but s/he must be a fearsomely powerful figure in the New York sports-concession industry indeed, because a good 80 percent of all concession booths at the ’95 Open have signs that say FERON’S on them. This goes not only for the edible concessions—whose stands have various names but all of whose workers seem to have pale-blue FERON’S shirts on—but also for the endless rows of souvenir- and tennis-related-product booths that flank whatever of the grounds’ Hellesponts aren’t flanked by food booths already. The really hard-core, big-ticket souvenirs are sold on the Stadium’s E side, in an area between the plunging Infiniti and the IBM Match-In-Progress Board. There’s racketry and footwear and gear bags and warm-ups and T-shirts for sale at separate booths for Yonex, Fila, Nike,34 Head, and William Serbin. There’s a U.S.T.A. booth offering free U.S.T.A. T-shirts with a paid U.S.T.A. membership (which membership is essentially worthless unless you want to play in U.S.T.A.-sanctioned events, in which case you have no choice but to enlist). But any item with a “U.S. OPEN ’95”–mention on it is sold exclusively out of a FERON’S booth. Of these booths there are “0/40 at FERON’S,” “FERON’S U.S. Open Silks,” and “FERON’S U.S. Open Specials.”35 It’s not at all clear what the term “Specials” is meant to signify in terms of price: U.S. Open ’95 T-shirts are $22.00 and $25.00. Tank-tops even more. Visors $18.00 and up. Sweatshirts are $49.00 and $54.00, depending on whether they’re the dusty, acid-washed autumn colors so popular this year.

  It’s also clear that the sea-lanes of trade between FERON’S itself and the good old United States Tennis Association are wide open, because no official FERON’S souvenir says “U.S. Open ’95” without also saying “A U.S.T.A. Event” right underneath.

  The grounds don’t exactly empty out between the end of the afternoon’s slate of matches and the start of the evening’s,36 but the crowds do thin a little. Flushing Meadow gets chilly and pretty as the twilight starts. It’s about 1900h., that time when the sun hasn’t gone down yet but everything seems to be in something else’s shadow. The ticket-takers at the Main Gate’s turnstiles change shifts, and the consumers coming down the promenade are now dressed more in jeans and sweaters than shorts and thongs. Lights over all the N.T.C. courts go on together with an enormous thunk. The courtlight gives the underbelly of the hanging Fuji Blimp a weird ghostly glow. There’s more serious, 5-Food-Group, dinnerish eating now going on at the International Food Village and in the Corporate Hospitality Areas. Sampras and Philippoussis have quit the field in the Stadium, Sampras bearing his shield and the Australian carried out upon his own (as it were). Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Mary Joe Fernandez are now warming up on the Stadium Court while people in the bleachers try to stagger very carefully down the steps to get out, lugging their coolers and cushions, looking simultaneously sunburned and cold. Coming up on the Grandstand Court is a mixed-doubles match I’m looking forward to because one of the teams on the program has the marvelous name “Boogert-Oosting.” Various tangential singles matches are under way on Courts 16–18, and something that’s fun is to go over to these Show Courts and not to go all the way in and sit in the little sets of stands but to stand on the path outside the heavy green windscreens around the Show Courts and watch the little stripe of bare fence near the bottom for the movement of feet and to try to extrapolate from the feet’s movement what’s going on in each point. One unbelievably huge pair of sneakers under the screen on Court 16 turns out—sure enough—to belong to Richard Krajicek, the 6'6" Dutchman who plays like a mad crane. These shoes have to be 16EEEs at least; you wouldn’t believe it. I am holding a $4.00 kraut-dog and sodapop I would very much like to find someplace isolated and quiet to consume.

  It is not at all quiet outside the Main Gate as true evening falls. Not only does the combined em- and immigration of crowds for the different Sessions make the whole promenade from Gate to subway stop and parking lots resemble the fall of Saigon. It’s especially unquiet out here economically. I don’t know whether this magazine will run an aperçu of what all’s going on out here as the sun falls, but I don’t see why not, because it’s not all that surprising. Since the 1995 U.S. Open is primarily—unabashedly—about commerce, and since commerce is by its nature uncontainable, it shouldn’t be at all surprising that the most vigorous crepuscular commerce is taking place out here, outside the tournament’s fence and Gate, in markets of all shade and hue. I have, e.g., in the last twenty minutes received three separate solicitations to buy pot (all wildly overpriced). The sweet burnt-pine smell of reefer is in the air all over out here, and one young guy in oversized fatigue pants is smoking a bone on a bench right next to a very neat and dapper old gentleman who’s sitting with his hands folded primly and not giving any indication he smells anything untoward.37 Scalpers have upped the pressure of their pitches in the lengthening shadows and are practically applying half-nelsons to anybody on the promenade who seems even possibly to be looking for something, even if that something is just a quiet isolated place to eat a kraut-dog.38 As mentioned supra, I’m the proud possessor of a U.S. Open ’95 Media Pass—which consists of a neck
lace of nylon cord from which hangs a large plastic card w/ a direly unflattering little photo of me that hangs against my chest at about the level of a sommelier’s tasting cup—and twice this evening outside the Main Gate I’ve been approached by somebody wanting to borrow the Media Pass and then slip it back to me through the black fence once they’ve strolled inside. One offer was a straight-out bribe, but the other involved a distinguished and corporate-looking gray-haired guy in green golfer’s slacks who had a complex tale of woe about a tubercular niece or something who’d paid a surprise long-distance visit to NYC and whose fondest wish was to get into the U.S. Open and that tickets were sold out, etc.39 I observed at least one turnstile’s ticket-taker (not the flinty-eyed Throgs Neck ticket-taker) receive some sort of subtle maître-d’ish payment for allowing somebody to bring in something spectators were by no stretch of the imagination allowed to bring into the N.T.C.40 If you don’t have a Stadium ticket but have the NYC savvy and financial resources, certain Stadium ushers are said (by two separate reliable sources) to be willing to place you in a vacant seat—sometimes a really up-close and desirable seat—for a sub-rosa fee, and a percentage of this fee is then apparently kicked back to a certain enterprising person or persons in the National Tennis Center who know of seats that for one reason or another aren’t going to be occupied during a certain interval and relay this information to ushers (for a price). Part of the beauty of the tennis here is the way the artistry and energy are bounded by specific lines on court, but the beauty of the commerce is the way it’s un- and never bounded. It’s all sort of hypnotic at night. The plunging Infiniti’s leather interior gets somehow mysteriously illuminated when the sun goes down, so that from a distance the car seems like a beacon. Trash-can fires appear in F.M.C. Park’s distance, and the #7 train’s interior’s also alit as it pulls into the overground Shea stop to the north. At about 2015h. there’s a fracas near the I.F. Village involving some unscrupulous/enterprising employee of whatever company actually makes the “ ’95 Open”–emblazoned T-shirts and hats and c. for the souvenir booths, who’s apparently diverted boxes and boxes of the shirts and stuff and is going around the grounds selling them on the sly at prices way below the booths’ prices,41 and N.T.C. Security’s involved, as well as—incongruously—what look like two Fire Department guys in slickers and fireman hats. It’s on the whole kind of a younger and rowdier and more potentially sinister crowd that’s coming in for the evening session. Their faces are stonier; eye contact seems hazardous the way eye contact on subways can be hazardous. The women tend to be dressed in ways that let you know just what they’d look like without any clothes on.