The Great American Open - National Logistics Post

Rainstorms upending schedules, inspiring speeches at formal ceremonies, farewells to legends-in-their-own-times, heartbreaking losses and rousing wins, tears and laughs and “Happy Birthdays”: normal, it’s the U.S. Open.

Solemnity matters, and I think everyone is quite conscious of the proximity of America’s greatest tennis tournament to two crucial moments in time, the annual 9/11 commemorations and the Jewish High Holidays, which more often come a few weeks after the tournament is over but this year will begin just as it is ending in a couple of weeks.

I do not confuse a sports column with a deep-think editorial, except to make the too easily overlooked point that sports in American life, and the management of sports in American life, matter to our way of life. Which is always, like freedom, only a generation away from being lost.

At the Billie Jean King Tennis Center Flushing Meadows, deep in the heart of Queens, you sing the “Star Spangled Banner” on opening night and, fittingly this year, you sing “Happy Birthday” dear Gael on the second — or the third — but in any case it was still the first round of the men’s draw. You belt or croon or hum a patriotic hymn, as you wish, and note the multitudes, foreign and native, standing in the bleachers and filling the multilingual neighborhoods of this borough, and, you assure yourself, even in their fine boxes and private suites. And you nod toward the men and women in blue who are always there, always watching, alert, prepared, that others may play and celebrate and live.

Cops are friendly and, when pulling this kind of duty, they are also willing to be even a little more polite and funny than usual, though New York cops always have a sharp wry sense of humor. You say a few words, talk about tennis and baseball (the Mets play nearby), learn they serve in the National Guard as well as the force, ask about recent deployments, say thanks again, they say “thank you, sir, enjoy the day,” they know you don’t make mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep.

Because these days some do; we have members of Congress, we have candidates for office, we have teachers in institutions of learning, we have newspaper and magazine writers and what-else, who despise these men and women.

Police Athletic League sports, very active in New York City, keep kids, as it were, on the courts and fields and gyms — and out of court, and perchance on the way to wearing the blue or finding something else to aim for that fits into the American way instead of trying to transform America.

There are other programs as well, supported by private citizens and foundations, for example the one Coach Eric Samuels, a tennis pal of mine from Washington who is at Louis Armstrong Stadium with a group of kids who otherwise would never be able to make the trip, nor learn to love the game he teaches them. They sang “Happy Birthday” for Gael Monfils, who turned 40 on the day he commenced what he said would be his last campaign in New York at a tournament he loves and that loves him, during what has been his final year on the tour.

One learns to be skeptical about great athletes declaring they are starting a new chapter, but the important thing is that Monfils, who as one of France’s “New Musketeers” for over 20 years helped keep French tennis on the map, not incidentally by falling in love with New York and finding New York fans falling in love with him. Monfils won his first-round match, and Stan Wawrinka, a terrific former champion who also fell in love with the big city, though a small-town boy from Switzerland, lost his, but he got a fine tribute as well, and he will be back one way or another.

On a more formal and solemn note, the Tennis Hall of Fame in historic Newport, Rhode Island had inducted, only a day or two earlier, another Swiss sports legend, Roger Federer, with himself and Mirka making emotional speeches that should resonate, perhaps especially Mirka’s quietly passionate observation that whatever glory her husband earned on the courts — and it would take a few chapters to describe it all — it is as husband, friend, family man, father, son, that she prizes him most and for which, as his parents (who were there) will confirm, he will be most beloved and blessed.

Words quite different but not unrelated come to mind when you hear strong, loving words; it is from the letter that George Washington wrote in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, which still stands and thrives not far from the Hall of Fame:

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with our favorable opinion of my Administration and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Well, there you go, sports and character. Chicken and egg? Cart and horse? That’s deep think stuff. But it is, either way, essential. It is something we must keep.

READ MORE from Roger Kaplan:

From Washington to Montreal, Toronto, and Cincinnati: Tennis in an Age of Chaos

Lucky Losers and Unbreakable Grit at the Mubadala DC Open

Win or Lose, Everybody Can Play

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