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The worst thing about rain on Labor Day weekend is that it means we can’t watch the U.S. Open on TV. We live about 30 miles from the U.S.T.A. Tennis Center where the two-week long grand slam tournament is played at the end of each summer. So when it rains here, it pretty much rains there. And then we’re stuck watching people pulling large blue tarps over the courts while we nibble on our Labor Day celebration hors d’oevres. And for the first time, it’s bumming out my kids.
It’s taken me a few years, but I’ve managed to pull off my not-so-evil plot to get my tweens interested in watching tennis on television. My parents did it to me, and so I thought I’d pass down the tradition to my children, who, until last year, would much rather have watched Cyber Chase than Venus Williams chasing down tennis balls.
This year, though, all that has changed. When I tuned in to watch this week’s evening sessions at the U.S. Open, the sound of the TV turning on drew my kids to the couch, a Pavlovian response to years of conditioning that the end of August and the beginning of September mean tennis on our TV.
Though most of the men’s matches end way past bedtime, we’ve watched a little Nadal and Roddick on the hard courts in Queens anyhow. And plenty of women’s tennis, too. My nine-year-old now understands how the scoring works, and he asks such advanced questions as, “Is he seeded?” and “Is her serve off?”
It brings me back to years of U.S. Open watching at my parents’ house, a spread of cheese and crackers before us and the cheers from our own little crowd. I remember watching Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova hit their way to the finals, Pete Sampras make history and Jimmy Connors’ defeat 24-year-old Aaron Krikstein in a four-plus hour marathon of a match when he was 39. We all had our favorites, but in the end, it was good tennis that we wanted to see.
There’s light drizzle falling over our house this morning which no doubt is making the courts at the U.S.T.A. Center slick. I’m hoping the foul weather pulls out of the area so we can tune in to tennis again tonight — and every night — until the finals next weekend. That would make us all very happy.
– Posted by Jen Singer
