Ben's Journal: US Open 2024

[Composed 8/27/2024]

Our day at the Open began as they have for the last few years: we trekked into Korea Town from our hotel, where we picked up delicious treats from our two favorite bakeries. From there, we headed down Roosevelt Avenue to the tennis grounds.

It was at the South Entrance to the grounds where our day took a turn. Here we met Pius, fresh from an Uber that had brought him from LGA. He took a flight in from DC earlier in the morning. We were excited to have him join and experience the Open for the first time.

The theme of the day would be Too Much Tennis. At any given moment, we had a handful of matches that we could have watched. This meant that we did a bunch of hopping around.

One match we caught the start of was between Dan Evans and Karen Khachanov. The previous year, we'd seen Evans play doubles with Andy Murray at the Citi Open. To add to that, Evans went on to win the Citi Open that year. It was a nice bit of continuity. Though after a couple of sets, we ducked out to watch Sinner take on McDonald.

I explained to Pius in a know-it-all tone that Sinner was ranked #1 and may very well win it all this year (spoiler alert: he did!). So, #37 McDonald doesn't stand a chance. This match should be a blood bath.

McDonald played the set of his life and took the first set 6-2! So yeah, you can't assume anything with these early matches. Eventually, Sinner found his footing and took the win. But for a moment there, McDonald was crushing it.

It was a similar story with the next match we caught, Daniil Medvedev vs. Dusan Lajovic . Unlike Sinner, Medvedev came out strong taking the first set with relative ease. But then Lajovic pulled a McDonald and played the set of his life, beating Medvedev 6-3 in the second set. He didn't pull off the upset, but again, it makes you appreciate that even these lower ranked players are very good.

After taking in a chunk of the Medvedev match, it was time to say our goodbyes to Pius. It had been a special treat sharing our US Open experience with him. I think it's so cool that he was able to take in a day at a world-class sporting event with so little hassle.

As we looked for the next match to take in, we were surprised to find Evans and Khachanov were still going at it. It was approaching 5:30 PM, and we'd initially watched them at 1:30 PM.

Shira somehow managed to get court-side seating by squeezing her way into the standing room only crowd. I ended up climbing to the top of the adjacent practice courts to get an overhead view of the action. Evans and Khachanov were visibly exhausted, yet still slugging it out.

Approximately 15 minutes later, I managed to capture this remarkable photo:

That's me standing steps away from Dan Evans as he returns to the court after a bathroom break. In what other world-class sporting event can you stand feet from the players as they return from a potty break? Given the crazy number of matches that need to be completed in these first few days, it's not surprising that some world-class players will find themselves on what appear to be high school level courts. It's just a tennis thing.

Evans managed to take the match, which at 5 hours, 35 minutes was the longest match in US Open history. He even mustered the strength to sign autographs. I shuddered at the thought of sitting for 5 hours and 35 minutes to take in a single tennis match. This sport is insane.

To further put the number of matches going on in perspective, at 8 PM we had 13 matches to choose from. 13!

In the evening we caught some ladies' matches, including Jasmine Paolini vs Bianca Andreescu and a personal favorite, Sofia Kenin vs Emma Raducanu.

I formed an affinity for Kenin during the 2019 Australian Open, when she played Simona Halep. There was a guy a few rows back from us shouting hi Simona! while she was playing. It all seemed creepy until I managed to strike up a conversation with the guy and learned that he was part of the Romanian Tennis Association, and he wasn't yelling 'hi,' he was yelling 'hai,' which means Come On.