us open 2012 : are you aiming at me?

benoit paire, on court 8

queens, ny

sept 2, 2012

***

i could understand benoit paire's frustration.

he was getting that losing feeling --he and his partner edouard roger-vasselin had split sets, but were down a break in the 3rd against the team of robert lindstedt and horia tecau.

and...he'd lost a heartbreaker of a singles match--wrapping close to the midnight hour--the night before, to the no. 19 seed, philipp kohlschreiber 6-7(4), 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6(4). it wouldn't have necessarily surprised me if he'd pulled out of the doubles, an early match, the next day.

i was thrilled that he didn't.

i was inspired first by this roland garros piece, but a more recent account of the first round encounter between paire and grigor dimitrov at the usopen ("an afternoon with benny and grigs") had me convinced that the stylish, combustible frenchman, could be my new tennis muse. my hope: that he'd advance through the weekend and i'd be in position to photograph him creating some kind of beautiful, sweeping arc with his arms or a wacky angle with his wrist and racquet...or in a writhing, torquing, tortured moment.

the doubles match would be my last chance for the 2012 season. i arrived at court 8 late. could i hope for a few good shots?

within the first 10 minutes, paire had thrown his racquet 3 times. the 3rd time in my general direction.

he earned a code violation.

i got some of my favorite shots of the day.

(eventually, even after the loss, he smiled...)

all photos © anita aguilar

us open 2012 : gearing up

practice with the pros, and a few shots from kid's day...

us open 2012 : trying times

us open 2012 : workin day and night

already love the new-look heineken red star cafe...

2010 us open: practice, monsieur le monf

gael monfils.

august 26-27, 2010

all photos @ anita aguilar

us open rewind: labor day, on the grounds

kuznetsova on the practice courts...

i didn't recognize her right away. she's a little blonder that i thought...

i recognized hot sauce in a hot second...

(and venus in the background).

tsonga, in action in the grandstand. i forgot how much fun it can be to scramble around for a seat in this arena.

after an afternoon of watching from the promenade, it was good to see shots hit from this vantage point...

tsonga defeated his countryman, julien benneteau, 7-6 (4), 6-2, 6-4.

us open rewind: labor day in the promenade

nadal's loss to juan martin del potro yesterday in the semifinals took the steam out of my plan for today (us open happy hour at my place). but still--i am here at home with the TV on, hoping del potro has a safin (circa 2000) kind of afternoon in flushing meadow. i won't be watching this final with the same intensity as i would a nadal vs. anyone match, but i can't resist the sounds of the open. i'm going to keep this broadcast on for as long as i can stand it (if fed locks up the first 2 sets easily, i head to the gym).

i have been able to get a very decent amount of tennis-watching in during this slam (a lot more than during this year's french and wimbledon)--and i did manage to make it out to queens for a little live action. here are some photos from my first day out there: day 7, sunday, september 6.

everything was aligned to ensure a perfect day: sunny and warm in the morning, with an occasional breeze (clouds joined us for the afternoon, no rain). nadal was to play in the stadium. ferrero, tsonga and del potro were scheduled, too. i was going to be with my cousins, who were just happy to be there. and i knew some friends would be attending that day, and we would meet at some point...

and so it was...

from what can't rightly be called "the cheap seats" (312 in the promenade),

the view is pretty good. i've seen many matches from the z seats before and still managed to have a great time.

when i go with my camera, i really don't see much of the actual match. too busy hoping for a particular shot. i've got an 18-270 mm tamron for my canon--it's a pretty big lens, certainly bigger than any i've taken to the open before--and i was really curious to see how it would compensate for my distance from the court. i was clicking away before i knew what was happening here with nadal... at a certain point, with his shirt pulled up, and his shorts rolled down, i actually felt a little dirty snapping photos...

but it didn't stop me...

and the next thing i knew both almagro and nadal were down on the ground, the ER theme song was playing, and my cousin reports that women were swooning all around the stadium...i believe he counted me among them.

and then things got really cheesy when nadal changed his shirt..."i'm too sexy" became the soundtrack in the stadium. i do love the expression of the woman, with the short brown hair, sitting behind nadal's chair.

action shots...not bad, all things considered...

nadal defeated almagro in 3: 7-5, 6-4, 6-4

v for victory, and vamos.

mary jo actually asked him about the "i'm too sexy" bit...i'm not sure how he's really supposed to respond to something like that, except by smiling and hoping the applause will last long enough that the interviewer will move on to the next question.

and then he signed about a hundred autographs on the way out, which i loved to see. smiles all around.

no more funny business!

rafa puts an ice bag on his head in the heat during his match against viktor troicki of serbia at the us open tennis tournament on august 30, 2008, nyc. photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images via tennis.com

day 8 of the us open will be day 1 of live tennis for me. and i am not messing around.

i spent the day waiting for them to post the order of play (cheers! nadal plays querrey at around 1pm!), catching up on some of the better us open reports in the ny times (favorite line: Tipsarevic, who appears as if he could be the love child of Salma Hayek and Sam Waterston, is a voracious reader who regularly quotes the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky...) and napping (because tomorrow is going to be good, long day).

i also had a little 3-way going here at the apt: i had the tv broadcast (on cbs and usa), usopen radio, AND live scoring on usopen.com going simultaneously for a good part of the afternoon.

this may seem like overkill, but tv tennis commentary for this grand slam being what it is, desperate times call for serious plan-bs and -cs. i couldn't bear tracy austin as a player (the pinafores, the bounce-bounce-bouncing on her tippy-toes, the nervous hand-blowing) and i'm even less enamored of her as a commentator. her voice is as tense as she used to appear on court, and she is far more defensive in the booth. between her, and mary carillo (channeling ann curry--why does everything have to be oh-so dramatic? ) and the joyless jim courier, i had no choice but to hit the mute button on the tv, and tune into the radio broadcast on the site. (way back in june, when i was trying to protect myself from martina navratilova's endless, ruinous monotone wimbledon commentary, i figured out that i could, thanks to dvr, properly sync radio wimbledon with the live tv broadcast. and that allowed me to enjoy andrew cotter, and virginia wade's poetic style (“ivanovic is this beautiful statuesque figure of a player, but she is being beaten below the knees…that net is taunting her today…it spared her against dechy") and the refreshing, uninhibited enthusiasm of andrew castle, and john lloyd, and others. there was one line, so insightful and apt, i'll never forget it: "nadal is very much like the tide, isn't he, he just keeps coming at you." i will have to find my notes to see who came up with that one...)

and yet, even as i was happy to have the us open radio broadcast available, it still didn't solve the matter of all the compelling matches that weren't being covered, on tv OR on the radio. explain how we were made to suffer through yet another listless lindsay davenport match on friday night, when robredo was playing safin, and moya was playing tsonga? and today, no robredo v. tsonga? and those are just the matches i took special interest in. there were many other hard fought, top-flight tennis battles for avid tennis fans. thankfully, those of us who wanted a little more could indulge in more ways than one.