As I speak, Nadal just served, and he served outside the line, and he’s trying to serve again. You know what’s delightful about this? In baseball games, there’s plenty of daydream time. People can sit back and daydream, even the players can. The most striking thing about tennis is they maintain their focus at all times. And so do the fans who are watching. So I would say, you can feel the focus here.
I’ve still got some work to do going into the second week of the Grand Slam. I’m a little bit tired. I’m doing everything I can to recover. I just practiced a little bit today, and I have a fantasy football draft to take care of later. Otherwise, I’m just planning to rest and get rehydrated and get ready for tomorrow. I’m probably not going to watch much tennis, I played enough today. Some friends are in town I might go out to dinner with, but it depends on when I get back into the city and what time my game is tomorrow. If I play at 11, I’ll just shut it down early tonight and get some room service.
Last night was hands down the highlight of my career. Nothing I’ve done so far compares to that. Hopefully I can have more moments like that. I celebrated with a massage last night. I got some food in me, drank some water, went home and went to bed.
I’m in this suite right now just hanging out with everybody around here. I’ve gotta go practice in about 20 minutes.
Taking a little time off, my daughter’s here, my husband’s here. Taking in some great tennis, sleeping past 4:30 in the morning, what could be better?
I have been to the Open from time to time over the years. I come from a family of tennis players. My parents had us go through the whole tennis lesson system in Northeast Harbor, Maine. I usually, though, have come through here to cover the Open wearing press badges, sweating, and trying desperately to make interviews sound interesting. Today I’m sitting here eating strawberries. This is definitely a very different angle of a US Open for me.
I have to tell you that—I’m going to walk in the corner and say this because I don’t want Campbell Brown to hear me—but all the ladies here have a huge crush on Nadal. And I think Nadal knows it. I’m rooting for the guy, Almagro. He’s scrappy. Harry [Evans] and I both are rooting for him. But Campbell Brown is for Nadal. Peggy Noonan’s for Nadal as well.
I love coming here. I’ve been here often, and it’s always great to be here. We saw the first game in which Williams basically slaughtered Hantuchova. This second game is really interesting because it’s a fight. It’s just great, I love the atmosphere.
I play extremely bad tennis but my sons play very good tennis. They’re both very jealous of me because I’m here and they’re not. My younger son in particular is very good, and he’s very cheesed off not to be here.
I was rooting for Almagro, but now it seems like Nadal has him. I’m a Federer man myself, I’d like to see Federer win it.
I like baseball actually, I go to Yankee Stadium quite regularly. What’s different about this is it’s just two people. It’s interesting sometimes…Oddly when you’re sitting on the court, the psychological aspects seem much more evident than on TV. It becomes very obvious who’s up and who’s down. The great thing is how different it is from Wimbledon. There it’s just the tennis. Here, in between games there’s rock and roll music, competitions, giveaways, people sponsoring seat upgrades, more rock and roll music. It makes the atmosphere very different. The atmosphere on center court is almost cathedral-like.
I have a huge crush on Rafael Nadal, and I’m watching him as we speak, and I would be far more focused and in tune to what’s going on except that Peggy Noonan and my husband [Dan Senor] are talking about Twitter. And prior to that, my husband and Christiane [Amanpour] were having a long debate about Afghanistan. If they would all just shut up I could go back to my obsession with Rafael Nadal, I’d be having a much better time.
I am a tennis player, although I’m not very good anymore. I used to play a lot when I was a kid, unfortunately life takes over, I’ve been way too busy to keep up my game. My strength was serve-and-volley. I never had the patience to just wait it out on the baseline. I was a pretty good player. I loved it. I played as often as I could. Every time I come to the US Open I think, “Oh, I’m so inspired, I’m going to get my game back.” But I never get around to it.
These guys are battling. Considering that one of them is Nadal, it does have a sort of gladiator quality to it. These gladiators are extremely well dressed, both wearing black shorts, one with a gold top, one with a blue top, it’s a long way from the white of early tennis. They really are like gladiators. When you’re here you can really see the battle, compared to watching on TV, when you don’t really see the way they look at each other.
I’m a reasonably serious tennis fan. It’s the only sport I try to play, so I appreciate how hard it is to do what they do. I’ve been playing since I was 8 or 10 years old. Now I’m just okay.
At this time of year it can often be beastly hot. Normally at this time of year, everyone’s got a fan. But it’s perfect tennis weather. Not too hot, cloudy so the sun isn’t beating down on everyone. But the most remarkable thing is, I don’t know exactly where Almagro is from, but to have two Spaniards playing extreme tennis at very, very high speed. Unless you’re here you can’t see how intense it is.
It’s the only spectator sport I’ve really stayed with my whole life.
The tennis is great. We’ve seen a couple of matches so far. We’re in the midst of the Nadal match. We saw the Serena match earlier. I think our guests are having a very nice time as well. It’s a quintessential New York late-summer day.
Olympus is a photographic company, several years ago when we introduced our E-System, we were looking to work with more of the sports photographer, and we thought this was a very good venue for that. This is the largest annual sporting event in the world. Our branding within the stadium is very good for all of our consumer products, as well as for the corporate entity.
I’ve been here since late morning. The atmosphere is certainly one of recreation and relaxation at the same time. The interest in the game is one thing, but the Open also allows people to have really nice conversations. It’s a reunion, in a sense.
