We woke up this morning assuming that the rain would have started, as predicted, and the matches would be delayed. But when we looked outside, things were still dry. (Well, as dry as anything in muggy new york gets when there are heavy storm clouds on the horizon.
So, filled with optimism, we packed up our sunglasses and the sunscreen (hahaha) and the rain jackets (there's the not-so-optimistic part) and headed out to Flushing, in Queens. Mark was stoked to find out that the first match would be Federer and Djokovitch, not Murray and Nadal as we had assumed (Nadal, being the number one seed, would normally get to play first so he wouldn't have to wait around all day for his match to begin). And even more stoked that the rain was holding off. The rain actually held off until about half an hour after they were done. So we saw Federer play a whole match, and it was a great match, and Mark was happy. All his US Open dreams have come true.
Or so I thought.
It turns out that due to the impending bad weather, they decided to play the Nadal match on a neighboring court, about 20 minutes after the Federer match had started. So although everyone there had paid for tickets to see two semifinal matches, we were going to have to choose which one we watched. We chose Federer, of course (that's the dream, after all), assuming that if the other match wasn't over when they finished, we could catch the last portion of it (barring a stampede to get to that court, which was likely). The positive side to this was that when all the people who wanted to see Nadal "evacuated" from our stadium, we got to move from our seats in the top row down to just above the court, which was awesome.
But then when the Federer match was over, they announced that we were welcome to stay in our seats in the big stadium and watch the other match on the big screen (I don't know or care what the proper name for the big screen is), since there were no more seats available in the other stadium. But here's the thing about making a statement like that: you should make sure you aren't showing shots of said neighboring stadium on the aforementioned big screen, so that the spectators can see all the empty seats you just told us were unavailable. Or that said neighboring stadium is not right next to the one we're in, so we can hike up to the top row and see into it, gazing at all the empty seats you just told us were unavailable.
People watching the other match from the top row of our stadium. 
Look at all those empty seats! Y'all, I'm surprised there wasn't a riot. These are tennis fans, so they're (somewhat) classy. Were this a football game in the south, a mob would have torn the gates down.
Anyway the Nadal match got rained out after all, so we might get to watch the rest of it tomorrow, depending on what we can work out with our flight and luggage and those logistics (which I am too tired and wet to think about right now).
We've spent the evening with some alone time for each of us... Mark grabbing a nap (read: watching ESPN Gameday) at the hotel, and I wandering the streets around our hotel hoping for cheap theater tickets for tonight (no dice; it's Saturday and raining). We'll grab a late-night deli and cheesecake dinner in a little while.
Wow, was this a post almost all about sports? What's my deal anyway?
2 comments:
I didn't realize you were going to the US Open. So cool!
yes it was a very sporty vacation. the ONLY week this summer with a home yankees game and an important federer match just happened to also include a clemson game like 13 states away. hubbies, right?
it was fun though!
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