A Tennis Interlude

We interrupt the politically-dominated B&E coverage for a report on Preppies in Queens, or as some like to call it, the U.S. Open Tennis Championship.

Early in the week, I knew the tournament had started, for I came face-to-face with that elusive pairing one just doesn't see on the #7 train at any other time of year: the rich WASP.

This couple stereotypified everything about tennis-loving prepsters. The man was head-to-toe in Polo (except maybe his top-siders), and to hide his clear discomfort among the Plebeians, the kept his face buried in The Wall Street Journal. The woman wore perfectly-pressed white pants and a white sweater-set. But her real kicker was the pink-with-white-stripes sweater that she had tied around her neck. Really, I thought that was such a stereotype that the preppies stopped doing it years ago. She plugged away on her Blackberry, looking up nervously at every stop along the way. Once she was finished with her Blackberrying, she flipped through a high-end catalog.

If my balls were only a little bigger, I'd have whipped out my camera and taken a photo of this couple. It was difficult to believe they were real.

Still, as I've explained before, the missus and I do enjoy good tennis. So as we did last year, we sacrificed our sleep on one weekend morning and got in line for day-of grounds admission passes. The missus knows just where to go and isn't afraid to run, so I took her stuff and let her go into the short "no bags" line to save us seats.

This year, a twelve-year-old boy out-ran her and we had to settle for second-row seats in the grandstand. Still. A perfectly swell place to see tennis. Too bad about the family around us.

They were polite enough, I guess, but at no point did they actually need all six seats they were saving. And they were talking about the financial markets and their second homes in Greenwich (with tennis courts, of course) and "family budgets" (which I suspect has a different meaning than the missus and my "family budget"). The matriarch spent almost no time watching tennis, but spent a great deal of time eating food from Citarella. I also caught a glimpse of a Spence sweatshirt. Apparently, the biggest argument in the family is whether they'll keep living full-time in NYC once their Greenwich home is finished. Matriarch says yes; Patriarch says no. Gee, I hope their marriage survives.

But the U.S. Open is occasionally about tennis, and our first match of the day was a doozy: Qualifier Gilles Muller squeaked out a victory against 18th-seeded Nicolas Almagro in five sets. Here's Gilles Muller serving...

And here's Almagro serving...

They were both excellent servers.

One boy in this family was vocally rooting for Almagro. He is, after all, the 18th seed in the world and had a two-set lead early on. So in the fifth set, when Muller had a chance to break Almagro to win the match (which he did) and the boy said, "Come on, Muller!" his father said, "I thought you were rooting for Almagro." The boy answered quite honestly, "But now Muller is winning."

That made a lot of sense. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. It helped gel a few things in my mind because that sort of clarity is what we judgmental pricks really look for when we're judging.

You see, it's because we make so much more money than the rest of our fellow citizens that we deserve those tax breaks.

So where was I? Right. Tennis. It was a long day in the heat. We didn't stay for the completion of the next match. There was less fire and less passion in the players. But we got our money's worth with Almagro and Muller.

And the U.S. Open really does make for great people-watching, especially when you want to feel morally superior.