COMMENTARY : Long Live the Open, Loud and Unruly As It Is

There are roughly 2,000 media types on hand in Flushing Meadow, N.Y., to cover the U.S. Open tennis tournament, including the guy who interviews ticket scalpers on the overpass from the subway platform outside and never gets to see the inside of the National Tennis Center.

Sooner or later -- often after an ingrate player has complained about the playing conditions -- each will consider a tome on the subject of just where the event should be contested.

No sooner had Martina Navratilova dispatched a young Argentine named Federica Haumuller Tuesday when she took off on what a nerve-racking experience it is playing the Open. It’s a time-honored ritual of Martina’s, one she should have scuttled long ago.

OK, so when the wind shifts they find it necessary to run planes in and out of nearby LaGuardia Airport over the courts. And maybe some folks do find it necessary to yawn, scratch or look at their watch while a point is being contested. So what?

In the world of sport there are places where certain events belong, no questions asked. If you ever saw a pro football game in Tiger Stadium, Detroit, you’d know what I’m talking about.

This isn’t to say the old home of the Lions is the only place an NFL game can be appreciated fully, just that it’s so much more conducive to adding something to the contest.

After having the opportunity to view college football games in perhaps a hundred different stadia, the ones that register here almost immediately are located on the campuses of Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Georgia and Washington. Just to prove size and upkeep have nothing to do with it, Dartmouth’s Memorial Field and decrepit Harvard Stadium also are cited.

While Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are accepted as 1 and 1A as far as baseball viewing goes, fact is there are a dozen minor-league parks just as good, perhaps better. We’re talking about a facility for the enjoyment of a game here, not how much electronic gadgetry is present and what epicurean delights are available at the concession stands.

If there’s a better place to watch college hoops than the Palestra in Philadelphia, I’ve yet to experience it. And you know the game’s the thing when you sit through a couple of doubleheaders of the Indiana State High School Championships in Butler University Fieldhouse and barely complain about the fact the benches have no backs.

All hockey arenas should have the reputation and tradition of the Montreal Forum combined with the crowd of howling banshees who show up for games in Chicago Stadium and the chummy, cock-fight atmosphere of the Boston Garden.

As a matter of fact, that’s what Louis Armstrong Stadium and environs provides tennis, an atmosphere totally different than what Freddie Forehand and Vicki Volley are used to. This is bad?

All but a few of today’s practitioners are ignorant of what the U.S. Open scene was like before 1978. Forest Hills, barely three miles away, is a comely old joint where never was heard a discouraging word from the ultra-polite audience.

It was Wimbledon all over again, only not half as good.

A check of the accounting ledger after an ice age of play there revealed to the U.S. Tennis Association that not enough folks were showing up to pay the bills. The country club set be hanged, let’s try to popularize this sport they decided.

For most of the year, the tennis pros travel around playing quiet little matches, protected by a chair umpire who is constantly cautioning the audience that hitting a backhand requires as much quiet and concentration as entry into the skull for brain surgery.

And after a while, players, who can practice four to a court side-by-side as far as the eye can see, actually begin believing that even the slightest sound or movement is at least as big a crises as the Persian Gulf situation.

A flashbulb going off, a scream or sudden movement can be distracting. But distractions are there in every sport. Imagine a pitcher, in the ninth inning of a World Series game with the score tied, complaining because there’s movement in the stands. Or John Unitas demanding perfect silence as he prepared to march the Baltimore Colts into the record books in that epic Yankee Stadium struggle years ago.

This is the U.S. Open, loud, raucous and ridiculous. In other words, the way we like our sports. We want our champions thick-skinned, able to handle adversity and quick enough to avoid an obscenity or foreign object thrown from the stands.

Several years ago, Stan Smith trooped into town to conduct a clinic and it was just after the United States had beaten Romania in a memorable Davis Cup confrontation in Bucharest. It was out-and-out war through the first four matches and the teams were square, 2-2, heading to the last match, Smith vs. Ion Tiriac.

Stan moaned and groaned about the treatment, how he and his teammates feared for their lives as Tiriac, playing out of his gourd, evened the match forcing a fifth and deciding set.

“At that point, they came out and laid a layer of sand over the clay slowing the surface down even more,” big-hitter Smith said. He was alive now and out of his chair describing the final set, which he won, 6-0. It was suggested the experience would always be one of the highlights of his career.

“You know, you’re right,” he said.

Would that they transfer the Masters out of Augusta? Long live the bellicose Open in its unruly, seamy home hard by that vision of awfulness Shea Stadium. Nearly a half million spectators (last year’s attendance) can’t be wrong, even if they are New Yorkers.