Why I Love the U.S. Open

8/29/2019

Ubaldo Scanagatta, at his 40th US Open. Photo by Art Seitz

Part of it is the tennis, of course. But I will admit, the high point of the U.S. Open these days, for me, is getting to see old friends and familiar faces, from decades of Opens and Wimbledons.

Tennis is a traveling circus, quite unlike any other sport -- writers, commentators, experts, former players, coaches, business types, publicists and officials who pop up in sunny places from Melbourne to Monaco to Miami, kaleidoscopic yet permanent. (There was Virginia Wade, 1977 Wimbledon champion, with Queen Elizabeth II in attendance, looking as brisk as she did rushing the net, on her way, presumably to a BBC assignment.)

I go to Flushing Meadows to see my friends, the ones who have survived the shrinking of the print-media corps. Some in this international rat pack seem to have been here forever –like Ubaldo Scanagatta from Florence, Italy, who files for three Italian papers and provides expertise on TV and radio on his site, Ubitennis.com. (In four languages.)

Ubaldo – who turns 70 on Saturday -- knows how to live. On his annual fortnight in New York, he comes prepared with familiar food -- grated cheese (Colla Parmigiano Reggiano), olive oil (Esselunga Extra Virgin) and Rigamonti Bresaola, which is described online as “air-dried, salted beef that has been aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple color. It is made from top round, and is lean and tender, with a sweet, musty smell. It originated in Valtellina, a valley in the Alps of northern Italy's Lombardy region.”

Even in these barbarian parts of the New World, it might perhaps be possible to find such Parmesan and Olive Oil and Bresaola, but Ubaldo takes no chances. He deigns eating with plastic, and therefore carries a real fork and a real knife in his kit, and when Italian players are not keeping him busy il mangia bene.

One of the highlights of my journalistic career was before the Monday final in 2009, when Ubaldo invited a few American amici sportivi to the dining room, where he broke out the Parmesan, the Extra Virgin and the Bresaola.

Ubaldo displays his New York survival supplies. Photo GV

On Thursday I spotted Ubaldo in the Italian corner of the media writing room and I thought of other compatrioti famosi – Rino Tommasi, who analyzed the daily matchups on the Open programs for many decades, and Gianni Clerici, the squire of Lake Como, former amateur player (including Wimbledon, 1953), novelist, expert, with a waspish humor on and off the air. Clerici bestowed Italian heritage on Bud Collins, re-naming him “Collini.” But alas, Gianni does not come around anymore at 89, and neither does Rino at 85, and Bud passed in 2016. (The Media Center is named for him.)

Many of my American friends are still typing and talking. A few days ago, I sat with tennis high priests Steve Flink and Joel Drucker during a match in Ashe Stadium, and also caught up with Johnette Howard, John Jeansonne, Wayne Coffey, Jeff Williams, Helene Elliott, Bob Greene, Anne Liguori, Chuck Culpepper, Andre Christopher and my tennis pal Cindy Shmerler.

Three more were hanging together in the media center: NYT international reporter Chris Clarey, retired NYT columnist (but still active) Harvey Araton and Adam Zagoria, New York sports expert who writes for the NYT on occasion. Nice guy that he is, Adam took a photo of the three of us.

Araton, Clarey, Vecsey. Lot of words, lot of air miles. Photo by Adam Zagoria

For all the camaraderie, there is an air of nostalgia to the Bud Collins Media Center. A decade ago, the place bustled from morning to post-midnight with dozens and dozens of tennis writers from major cities – Boston, Miami, Denver, Orlando, Dallas, and on and on. There was a clatter of writers who were competitors but also friends – Robin Finn of the NYT provided a stash of Twizzlers (and really nasty nicknames for tennis stars.) Alas, falling circulation and earlier deadlines and changing Web priorities have cut back on the banter and the community.

The tennis endures. On Thursday, I watched in the lower press area of Arthur Ashe Stadium, as sixth-seeded Alexander Zverev of Germany matched his power and height against the mixture of power and drop shots of Frances Tiafoe, an American born in Sierra Leone.
On a sleepy, sunny, pre-holiday afternoon, the predominantly American crowd urged Tiafoe as he befuddled Zverev in the second and fourth sets, but ultimately Zverev prevailed, 6-3, in the fifth.
The fans surged out into the midway in search of refreshment or more tennis on the back courts. I went back to the Media Center to schmooze.

Alan Rubin link

8/30/2019 05:27:57 pm

Great story about old friendships and food. If you add health and family, you have all the essential ingredients to enjoy life.

There are many fantastic places in the world, but if I was allowed only one more foreign visit it would be Italy.

Early in our marriage, December 1961, Sandi and toured Emilia-Romagna for two weeks. Except for the first and last nights, we found a different place to stay each evening, often selecting the town based upon the review of a local restaurant.

It is more than that the food was excellent, it is the people who own the restaurants who added to the experience. Their warmth and welcoming of visitors, especially ones who attempted to converse in their native language, added the any eating experience.

It is difficult to pick a favorite Italian visit, but a week in Siena for the Palio was a most remarkable experience. Ten of thirteen contrades, churches, compete in a most unusual fixed bareback horse race around the Compo.

The town dripped with medieval pageantry, but roaming the streets and talking with the locals was special. One evening almost every street had a communal banquet set up.

Politics aside, the Italians know how to enjoy life.

bruce

8/31/2019 08:43:29 pm

alan,

all true.

i've been five times.

i usually spend a few days in rome, take the train to florence, rent a car and drive to san gimignano and stay in the main piazza at the leon bianco hotel.

use it as a base for day trips.

i fell in love with siena. two visits ago i drove there, wandered over to the campo and just sat there for five hours soaking it all in.

always seems to be some local pageantry going on when i visit.

also enjoy volterra a lot and a little postage stamp size walled place called monteriggioni which is mentioned in the divine comedy.

bruce

John Jeansonne link

8/30/2019 09:02:30 pm

To include my name among the greats of ink-stained wretchedness is indeed and honor. And, yes, the Open is a great event.

Altenir Silva

8/31/2019 07:51:16 am

Dear George,
It's very cool to meet with old friends. And when these meetings are shared with stuff that we love, it gets much better.
Enjoy the US Open.
Best/Altenir

Roy Edelsack

9/1/2019 02:48:50 pm

I've been on the grounds every day this year, ignoring my Ashe seats to watch from the better vantage points available on all of the other courts. I met a delightful Englishman with a Commander Whitehead mustache and beard born within a mile of Wimbledon who has never been to The Championships but has been to Roland Garros and Melbourne. I met a group of fanatical Canadians with their "We the North" banner left over from the Raptors' championship parade rooting hard for Andreescu in her big win over Wozniacki. I met a delightful young woman usher and single mother working double shifts and somehow keeping her composure in the face of some challenging fan behavior.

At the Open it's not just the old friends, it's the new ones too.

Oh and a word about the great Rino Tommasi. Every time I went to the Open with my Dad he would run to grab a $2.00 draw sheet with Rino's handicapping of the day's matches. My Dad called it the "Daily Racing Form."

George Vecsey

9/1/2019 04:10:34 pm

What great comments.
Alan, we've had 3 month-long stretches in Italy over the years -- people are so nice and the amenities are so pleasant. Bruce, we were in Siena twice but the horses were not running; still, we felt the presence and excitement.
John: Puh-leese! I've had at least three other scribblers say what an honor it is to be mentioned in the same sentence with John Jeansonne of Newsday.
Altenir: the international sports (soccer, Olympics, tennis) are extra fun -- for the aura of great travel, true, but also because in the past generation or two, there is a good quotient of female colleagues. (No part of that is meant to be sexist; the mix includes talent and sociability.)
Roy: so glad you are having a social time out there. My favorite sociability memory is from covering the first rain-induced "MIddle Sunday" back three decades or so. There was a night-long line, and it rained, and some people put up makeshift tarps. Sunday morning I interviewed fans who had waited, and a woman from somewhere and a man from somewhere else had spent the evening under the same tarp -- chastely, they added.
GV

WAYNE COFFEY

9/3/2019 10:34:16 am

Thanks for this beautiful post, George. It was great to see you. When I grow up, I aspire to write as elegantly as George Vecsey.

Ed Martin

9/3/2019 04:15:52 pm

GV, another of your lovely stories. Being an old-timer, I recall Allison Danzig as The NYT tennis reporter. Ring a bell?

bruce

9/3/2019 04:29:22 pm

ed,

well, you've really mixed me up up now.

I thought it was Quasimodo.

bruce

9/3/2019 10:07:13 pm

BRUCE, when he fell in the Mel Brooks film, “he was a dead ringer.”

George Vecsey

9/4/2019 05:56:28 pm

Ed: Yes, I met him during my Newsday days, and after I became NYT columnist in 82, there was a dispute about officiating at the Open and I called him at home (Roslyn) to ask if he ever remembered something similar. He could not have been more generous with time and memory.

bruce

9/3/2019 10:15:47 pm

ed,

ouch.

my favourite movie fall was george c scott's in doctor Strangelove.

laugh every time I see it.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Why I Love the U.S. Open

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