I {HEART} Tennis!

We went to the US OPEN on Friday... about freakin' time!  We were supposed to go last year, but I was sick on the day we were supposed to go, and the following day, we could have gone, but my mom had off from work and I opted for being a good daughter since she had recently seperated from my stepfather....  Anyway, this year we went with no tickets -- fingers crossed that we could get in, even though we had seen that Grounds tickets (seats that aren't specific to a stadium) were sold out.  We ended up scalping tickets for $150 -- not too bad.  Tickets were for the Authur Ashe stadium, but not together.  Face value of the tickets were $58/each.  We had a backup plan of bumming around in Manhattan - luckily, it didn't come to that.

I have always told Adam that the best part of going in the first week is walking around the outside courts checking out the doubles activity and players that are lower in the ranks -- in the past, my stepfather and I have watched players that later got really good... kind of cool to have seen them when they were clawing their way up the rankings...

Well, the place was a mob scene and it was tough to see much of anything anywhere.  We tried to watch some side games (including Hingis playing doubles) but couldn't see much.  It's great to be able to see Hingis, but if you can't see the rest of the court, you can't really appreciate the game...  So, we went in to the Ashe stadium where we had tickets...  At first, we snuck in to a lower level and enjoyed being really close to the game, but eventually got booted when one of the ushers saw us switch rows when the people whose seats we were in showed up and we tried to move down a row.  We never ended up sitting in our actual seats and managed to secure seats in the less-nosebleed seats.  Our seats were in Row Z - the last row.

We watched Marty Fish (an American) loose to a Spaniard in 5 sets -- tennis was just OK.  There were so great points, but the game in its entireity (sp?) was a little ho-hum - 5th set of course was much more interesting.  We were actually hoping that the first match would be over sooner so we could watch more of Serena's game.  By 6:15 we were pretty pooped from having been outin the sun for 6 hours -- and we were each a bit hungover from teh two beers...  

I was bummed that we didn't leave with any US Open paraphenalia, but neither of us saw any shirts we really loved.

Things to keep in mind for next year: 

1) Friday is too late in the Open... we should go Mon, Tues, Wed when it is less crowded and there are more games on the outside courts.

2) We need to get there before 11am, so we can secure good seats on one of the outside courts.

3) We didn't save any time going to Flushing Meadow from my mom's.  We'll just take Amtrak (with points I rack up from work) to Penn Station -- it will take the same amount of time.

4) Bookbags aren't allowed, but apparently really big purses are... it sucked having to check our bookbag.  So much for the snacks I packed.  I foolishly didn't even keep my cell phone (pants with no pockets) so we couldn't call our friends we were supposed to meet up with afterwards and cancel on them punctually.

5) AMEX has this very cool offer for cardmembers where you get a free disposable radio, so you can listen to the telecast games, AND the option of renting a TV, so you can watch games on other courts.  Djocovic was playing in the other stadium while we were watching Fish and it would have been cool to keep up with that 5 set match.

I guess I'm a little rusty from not having gone recently -- actually, I've gone twice since I've been with Adam, but I was in a corporate box both times (I know, poor me) so I didn't appreciate the Open from the "commoner" viewpoint... 

Can't wait for the Finals this weekend!!!