Had an opportunity to go to a U.S. Open match last week - my friend Marian Toy called me and had tickets for day matches all week - she’s between jobs and loves the U.S. Open. A lot. I decided to go to the first one she offered, lest I procrastinate and just blow the whole thing off and miss an awesome day out in Queens - so I got dressed and went to see Igor Andreev play against 4-time winner Roger Federer. Caught a quick 7 Express train and we were there early enough to see the end of the Novak Djokovic/Tommy Robredo match, amazing.

First off, walked past this upon entering - heat waves!

Imagine hopping out of that car wearing the Alife ‘Ball-Outs’ and maybe even this, and then limping to the trunk and pulling out a walker you’re rocking with tennis balls on it. Advantage, Spaz!

Anyway, since I have no really amazing shots of actual tennis play (our angle and my lack of a tan Canon 800mm lens kept it real point-and-shoot gully style), I figured I’d just cover one of the aspects I was finding so intersting - the tech level that the spectator is privileged to nowadays…

First of all, since the whole thing is sponsored by AmEx, if you’re a member, you can flash it and get a free radio, which Marion did for me… It’s tuned to a set frequency used in the Arthur Ashe stadium and it allows you to listen to the commentary from the TV broadcast of the event you’re seeing live, and it put me on to the subtleties of the matches I was watching (John McEnroe is always interesting, and later he was joined by Boris Becker, and they have great insight on the game from experience… but if you were watching you heard it, so I’m not telling you about anything you din’t ain’t know, riiiigh?). You can switch the mode to tune in standard FM ‘Blazing hip-hop and R’n'B Flavor’ if you want.

Next, if hearing the TV broadcast isn’t enough, you can rent this awesome little portable TV and keep track of what’s happening on the other courts! Picture-in-RealLifePicture.

If you’ve been watching the open, you’ve probably noticed the electronic line-calling and challenge that the players can now use. It’s basically ‘instant reply for tennis,’ and it’s probably gonna extinct anything remotely close to one of the most memorable aspects of 80’s tennis - the player/line judge arguement.

This dude really had his hat game right.

Kinda hot Nike track jacket Federer wore for the post-match interview.

Sunset flick from the nose-bleed section up top of the Arthur Ashe stadium.

Federer took it all the way out to a fifth set, revealing some mortality along the way. But he did win it, of course, and today he plays Andy Murray for his shot at a fifth U.S. Open title - that would be fifth consecutive title, by the way. What a great afternoon/night - humid summertime New York, exciting tennis, some Pepsi and chicken fingers, an amazing sunset. Awesome. Thanks Marian!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 11:54 and is filed under technology, tv, nyc, Common stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.