NEW YORK _ My streak is about to end. It is longer than DiMaggio's, shorter than Ripken's, just a few shy of Feliciano Lopez's (you can look that one up).
I have been to 63 or 64 straight US Open/National Championship tennis tournaments, as a spectator or reporter. This year, though, there will be no paying fans admitted at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and very few reporters. I will be watching the matches on television, like nearly everybody else. COVID-19 has done many things much worse than this, yet I reserve the right to whine a bit.
The Open is never just about the tennis, of course. It is also about the people, the food, the music, the sheer energy of the place. It is about the buzz and the booing. It is about the maddening impatience of the New York tennis fan, who must get ice cream right at this moment, even though Novak Djokovic is about to strike a second serve.
All of that stuff, along with me, will be missing when the matches start this week. We got a preview of that vacuum last week at the Western and Southern Open, also held at the National Tennis Center. Coco Gauff walked onto the Grandstand court, played to silence, lost in the first round, and left the place without applause from anybody but her father. Welcome to the void.
I'm not exactly sure what year it was that my personal streak began, whether I was five or six years old. My father is no longer around to remind me when he first drove us to Forest Hills for the National Championships. I do remember seeing Althea Gibson walking among the crowd, between courts, so it was either 1957 or 1958. My father pointed her out. She was an impressive figure, the first Black tennis athlete I ever saw in person. She would go on to win those two tournaments, then retire from amateur tennis because the job wasn't paying the rent.
My father always bought walk-up tickets at the gate for the first or second day. He knew what he was doing. The tickets were cheaper, every player was still around, and big names were assigned to the side courts. You could get up close and very personal. To this day, a grounds pass for the first days at the Open remains a great bargain _ if the virus ever gets out of the way. The brackets are fresh early on, and fans can court-hop.
When I first saw the quaint, cozy West Side Tennis Club in Queens, I could not quite believe that grass could be cut so low, so neatly, and that tennis was possible on such a surface. Until then, this city kid had only seen crabgrass in city parks. I couldn't figure out how anybody could get a fair bounce on it.
Those early years were dominated by Australian men and American women. But my dad, who was born and raised in Prague, insisted that none of these Aussies could have beaten the great Jaroslav Drobny, who was then well past his prime and competing only in Europe. My father soon found other players to support. Vera Sukova reached the quarters in 1962. My father would yell encouragement to her, in Czech. It was a bit embarrassing. He was shameless when Jan Kodes became a contender a few years later. I just wanted to go watch Maria Bueno, the glamorous Brazilian.
In 1970, two years after the tournament was opened to the pros, teenaged Jimmy Connors teamed with Pancho Gonzales in doubles. We stayed until late in the day, and watched that odd couple play a practice set on an outer court against the defending champs, Ken Rosewall and Fred Stolle. There was a lot of joking around, but Connors was taking every point very seriously. After he ran down an impossible ball near the net and tumbled to the ground, Rosewall playfully pretended to bang this irrepressible imp on the head with a racket. I felt as if I'd been invited to a private party.
Connors was my age. Watching his hard, flat strokes was definitive proof that my game was not going to advance past high school singles. It was a harsh realization, but I was OK with that. The kid was fun to watch.
The tournament went to clay in 1975, which was a great disappointment. The West Side Club became less enchanting and the whole place felt hotter. Clay-court specialists like Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas started winning titles. These were lost years for the American men. Chris Evert, meanwhile, had inherited the women's game from Billie Jean King and Margaret Court. My father was busy watching Martina Navratilova, a promising serve-and-volleyer from Prague.
The Open outgrew Forest Hills, moving to Flushing Meadows in 1978. The stadiums were gigantic, by comparison. I wanted to see the new kid, John McEnroe. You never knew what he would do if a baby cried in the crowd.
In 1980, I was assigned to the tournament for the Bergen Record, the first time I covered tennis as a sportswriter. I could go to every session for free, then write my thoughts on it. This was paradise, I figured. But in truth, it was also a lot of work. And when you actually interviewed a crude fellow like Connors, some of the innocent joy was lost.
That first year, McEnroe beat Bjorn Borg in the final. Borg just could not beat this guy, could not win the Open. The Swede was so disgusted with the result, he ditched the post-match interview and ran off. I followed him through the National Tennis Center's kitchen, along with several other reporters. Borg jumped into a car without a word and basically retired from the sport.
It always astounded me how one transcendent tennis star seemed to emerge, just as another faded. Billie Jean King and Margaret Court made way for Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Then Steffi Graf and Monica Seles came along, before the Williams sisters took over. On the men's side, McEnroe and Connors were followed by Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. Then Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Djokovic came along. We are waiting right now for worthy successors, in both men's and women's tennis. It's been an uncommonly long gap.
The transitional moments were always the most compelling, and at times heartbreaking. In 1985, working for the News, I waited to interview Pam Shriver under the metal seats in the Grandstand. She'd just lost a brutal quarterfinal to 16-year-old Graf in three, tiebreak sets. Shriver, who is a tough and talented woman, was crying her eyes out, because she realized right then that she would not be the one to take the baton from Navratilova. It would be Graf, for quite some time.
The emotions, the tantrums, and the showboating are what drive tennis, make it a great tabloid sport. Interplay with the crowd is essential. Tennis may be a gorgeous sport, especially when it's played by a Roger Federer. But you need the theater, or it is just an arcade game. You need McEnroe growing furious about some fan who won't sit down, or Nick Kyrgios conferring with a spectator about the location of his serve on match point.
This will be an imperfect tournament. Several of the top players are avoiding the Open, because of the COVID-19 threat and all the rules that come with it. In that way, the tournament will feel a little like the Australian championships in the 1960s, when many stars skipped that event and Margaret Court won all those Grand Slam titles against a weakened field. Maybe Serena can add one cheap title to all her other, well-deserved trophies. The empty seats will be a worse problem than a few absent players.
The Open makes me miss my dad, a lot. Even when I covered the tournament as a reporter, I made sure to bring him along the first week. Ivan Lendl made eight straight finals in the '80s. Navratilova, Mandlikova, Novotna, Kvitova... the great Czechs just kept coming, and he would still scream for them in their native language.
Nobody will be screaming this year. The Czechs, the Aussies, the Williams sisters will not hear more than an isolated clap from the stands. The guttural grunts on court will ring as hollow as the tennis balls themselves.
Like so many others, I won't be there to hear any of it. No tennis, no ice cream.
