As enjoyable as it was to watch a 45-year-old Venus Williams gamely hang on in the first round against a far younger, aptly named Czech, Muchova, Monday night on ESPN+, the poor man’s streaming option from the broadcasting colossus, one does wonder — do tickets to the U.S. Open really have to start around 300 bucks?
Tennis. It’s a luxury, for sure, and priced accordingly, but for several years I’ve been itching to sit in the cheap seats, if there were cheap seats, and swivel my head as I follow the bouncing ball like those spectators en masse in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (excepting of course the murderous Robert Walker, stock still center frame and eerily homed in on a sweating-it-out Farley Granger).
Just a 120-mile-per-hour serve away from the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at neighboring Citi Field, $20 Mets tickets can still be had, particularly if you’re okay taking in the opposite of a rivalry game, say, one against the Texas Rangers of the junior circuit, even as Major League Baseball slowly ratchets up its campaign to erase all such distinctions. That may be a terminally uninteresting team, but worth considering when they visit mid-September, if only because now every fifth day they trot out on the mound a onetime Mets savior, Jacob deGrom.
Time will tell, but such may be nothing more than a fantasy for this sports fan, as the kids’ summertime work schedules swamped the best-laid plans to continue what has been a family tradition since 2012 or so: attending at least one Mets came per year, even if it meant sitting high up where a bitter, damp wind off Flushing Bay was most acutely felt.
Meanwhile, back at Arthur Ashe Stadium, it’s nearing midnight on Monday at this writing, and men’s No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, now sporting the freshly shaved head of the convict, has his hands full with bearded Reilly Opelka of Florida by way of Michigan, all 6-foot-11 of him, tied for the tallest tennis player ever on the pro tour.
Big enough to look good on the small screen, in other words.